


When You Think About Love (Think About Me)

by SaintVince



Category: Love Simon (2018), Love Victor (TV 2020), Simonverse | Creekwood Series - Becky Albertalli
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Benji is the new kid in town, But Victor gets there in the end, Canon LGBTQ Character, Coming Out, Everybody lives in Texas, F/M, Falling In Love, Family Drama, Friendship, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Love Confessions, M/M, Panic Attacks, Queer Culture, Self-Acceptance, Slow Burn, The road to self-love is long
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:28:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 43
Words: 306,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27599594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaintVince/pseuds/SaintVince
Summary: Benji Campbell moves to the little town of Brandon, Texas, and Victor Salazar's life will never be the same.
Relationships: Benjamin "Benji" Campbell/Victor Salazar, Bram Greenfeld/Simon Spier, Lake Meriwether/Felix Weston, Mia Brooks/Andrew Spencer, Mia Brooks/Victor Salazar
Comments: 636
Kudos: 290





	1. Welcome to Brandon

**Author's Note:**

> CW: mild homophobic language, internalized homophobia, descriptions of panic attacks
> 
> It's been about a million years since I wrote and published any fanfiction, but there was something about this series that really got under my skin. There's a lot about Victor's story that I relate to, and I couldn't stop wondering what Victor's life would've been like if the Salazars hadn't left Texas. So, here it is, the Love Victor Texas AU that I can't get out of my head. I think I might be writing this for a younger version of myself, who was a closeted gay teen living in a small town in the countryside with a religious family, who definitely would've stayed up late secretly reading this fic on a school night.
> 
> Brandon is a fictional place inspired by a real town in the DFW area that I have visited on a few occasions. I'm not a native of Texas nor a native speaker of Spanish nor a member of the Latinx community, so please forgive any mistakes (constructive feedback is welcome). There are some bits of dialogue in this story that come directly from the show and movie; the writers of Love, Victor and Love, Simon deserve all the credit for them. I am also not planning to provide translations for the Spanish, unless something comes up that's important to the plot; you can assume the bits of Spanish here are mainly small talk, pet names, etc. The title comes from a Dolly Parton song by the same name.
> 
> Edit: Since music is such a big part of this story, I've put together a playlist of the main songs that are featured in it. With a few exceptions (mostly Dolly Parton), all the artists on the list are either queer or Latinx in order to reflect the themes of the story. You can find it on Youtube [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHP6IdHiqyUVmbBvB45cNdCEenUgMpbB-).

Most kids would be excited to go back to school for their sophomore year, but when Victor Salazar’s alarm went off early on Monday morning, all he felt was a chest-tightening pang of dread. Yeah, he’d be going back to seeing all his friends every day, back to playing basketball which he loved, back to a normal routine outside the house where he wouldn’t have to listen to his parents’ constant bickering. And, best of all, he’d be turning sixteen soon, which meant finally getting his license and having some real freedom. All of that was great, but the problem was, going back also meant being watched, it meant being teased by his friends for his lack of experience with girls, and it meant another year of hiding behind a mask.

Victor might not know who he was yet, but if there was one thing he was sure about, it was that the face he showed the world definitely _wasn’t_ the real him.

And a small town in Texas _definitely_ didn’t seem like the right place to let that mask slip.

To be fair, Brandon, Texas, was not actually all that conservative as far as Texas went. It was a college town near the DFW area, with a small downtown full of coffee shops, artsy student types, and microbreweries. On any given weekend, you could probably find an art show or a music festival taking place in the town commons. But drive about five minutes out of the town center and you were surrounded by farms and rolling fields, like the small six acre plot of land where the Salazars had lived for all of Victor’s nearly sixteen years of life. There were churches all over the place with big billboards reminding everyone to come to Jesus, and the culture was traditional, to say the least.

Even though Victor was a morning person and usually the one to make breakfast for the family, today he just couldn’t seem to stop his feet from dragging, each task in his morning routine taking twice as long as normal. By the time he made it to the kitchen he was running late and his mom’s pancakes were cold.

“ _Cari_ _ñ_ _o, que pas_ _ó_ _?_ What did I tell you about rolling up your sleeves?” Isabel snapped at Victor’s little brother, Adrian, whose sleeve was a sticky mess of maple syrup from wrist to elbow. She let out a sigh of exasperation. “Mando, I _told_ you he needed help with that!”

Armando stiffened defensively. Victor was so not in the mood for this. He grabbed a pancake and wrapped it up in a napkin just as he heard his father say, “He’s seven years old, he can keep his own clothes clean! You can’t baby him all the time, Isa.”

“I’m not babying him, I’m trying to make sure I don’t have to spend my entire day getting stains out of his laundry. Maybe if you’d help with that once in a while-”

Victor had never been more thankful to hear the knock on the front door that meant his best friend had arrived. He swung the door open and shut without even bothering to greet Felix, rushing out and away from his parents’ raised voices as fast as humanly possible.

“Oh boy, another one of those mornings, huh? Sorry, man,” Felix sympathized. Victor, mouth full of pancake, just nodded. Felix glanced back toward the house. “Will we be graced with the sunny presence of Pilar today?”

“Nope,” Victor replied, climbing into Felix’s very small, very modest car. “She said Eric was picking her up.”

Felix started the car up. “Aww, she’s growing up so fast these days. Starting high school, a serious boyfriend, not to mention the _outfits_ she’s been wearing… Seems like just yesterday we were tussling over the last Wild Berry Pop Tart in your living room.”

“That _was_ yesterday, Felix. You guys were like a couple of wild animals.”

“One of these days, I’m going to beat that girl in an honest fight,” Felix muttered, shaking his head and turning out of the Salazar’s long, dusty driveway. It was only a quarter past seven in the morning and already unbearably hot outside.

“Yeah right. We both know Pilar fights dirty.”

“Truth. So, how we feeling about sophomore year? Excited? I am. I have big plans to finally get Lake to notice me this year. I have a feeling man, this year it’s really going to happen.”

“Do these plans involve stalking her on Instagram and waving awkwardly at her in the hall, just like every other year?”

Felix shot him a wounded look. “Oh ye of little faith! No, it’s much more sophisticated than that. Not that there’s anything wrong with showering her with love and appreciation on all the social meds as a sign of my undying devotion.”

“So desperate, man.”

“Whatever. What about you? Think this will be the year that Victor Salazar finally finds love?”

The icy clutch of anxiety made a swooping return, squeezing Victor’s heart tight in his chest. He swallowed, trying to keep his voice even. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

Felix seemed to sense Victor’s discomfort and smiled in apology. “I get it, dude. God knows I haven’t had much luck with the ladies yet either. But just wait, I’m sure it’s gonna happen for you soon.”

 _I doubt that…_ Victor couldn’t believe that he hadn’t even arrived at school yet and one of his friends was already bringing up his lack of experience when it came to romantic relationships. He knew that Felix meant well, and would never resort to teasing him about it in the much nastier way he’d gotten from some of the other guys at school, but it was doing nothing to relieve the thorny ball of stress and fear that had settled low in his gut. Not for the first time, the truth sat awkwardly on the tip of his tongue: _I think that maybe there’s something wrong with me. Something that’s going to ruin everything, and I don’t know what to do._

But like always, Victor swallowed the words down, plastering a half-hearted smile on his face. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

School was school. His morning classes flew by like the summer had never happened at all, and the routine was surprisingly calming. He could just stare politely forward or let his eyes drift to the window, spacing out a bit as his teachers went through their first day niceties and course expectations. By the time lunch had rolled around Victor was finally starting to relax into things a little.

Naturally, it was just as he had started to let his guard down that it happened.

He was putting some stuff in his locker and talking with Felix, when he happened to catch someone walking down the hall towards them from over Felix’s shoulder. Their high school wasn’t exactly tiny, but it wasn’t huge either. It only had a population of around a thousand, so everyone pretty much knew of everyone else, even if they didn’t all know each other well. And that’s why Victor noticed when a guy he’d never seen before walked up to the water fountain near them and bent down to take a sip, his golden brown hair sweeping down to frame his face for just a moment. The water rose to meet what had to be the most beautiful mouth Victor had ever seen on another human, and that plus the hair and the cheekbones and the toned arms and just basically _everything_ about this guy had him standing there wide-eyed and breathless, mouth gone dry and heart pounding a staccato rhythm in his chest.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t just the fact that he’d never seen him before that had him noticing this guy.

 _Shit. Shit, shit, shit… this can’t be happening_ , Victor thought as he finally came to his senses. Felix was waving a hand in front of his face somewhat obnoxiously, and he blinked, startling out of his trance.

“Hellooo? Earth to Victor? You in there buddy?”

Victor swallowed, trying desperately to regain control of himself. It was too late though, Felix was looking behind him and had followed the direction of Victor’s gaze.

“Huh, guess there’s a new kid,” Felix said, completely oblivious to the utter thrall said new kid had so effortlessly pulled Victor under. Before Victor knew what was happening, Felix was walking over there. “Let’s go meet him!”

“No!” Victor blurted out, but Felix was already gone, extending a hand in welcome to the _(insanely gorgeous)_ guy.

“Hi there new kid! I’m Felix,” Victor’s cringe-worthy best friend said, shaking hands. The guy smiled, instantly and impossibly becoming even more beautiful, and Victor felt his heart immediately start doing acrobatics again.

“Benji,” the new guy replied, and then he was looking Victor up and down and _holy shit Victor was going to have a heart attack and die right there on the spot._ He gave Victor an appreciative nod. “Nice shoes.”

“Oh.” Victor’s brain was having trouble parsing language, despite the fact that he’d been fluent in not one but two of them since infancy. “Uh. Yeah, thanks. My mom found them at a garage sale. She didn’t even know how cool they were. Got them for practically nothing.”

 _Shut up, shut up_ , his mind urged in mortification.

“Guess they were destined to be yours,” Benji said, then looked a little embarrassed. “That is, if you believe in that kind of thing.”

Victor laughed nervously. “I do. Believe in cool kicks, I mean.”

Before this ridiculously embarrassing exchange could continue any further, they were suddenly bombarded by a petite blond girl elbowing past Felix into their group. Felix’s entire face lit up in excitement at having been touched by Lake Meriwether, however briefly or rudely. Just behind her, trailing along more politely, was Mia Brooks, widely considered to be the most beautiful and popular girl in their grade. She smiled apologetically at them.

“Why hello there, I don’t believe we’ve met!” Lake shook Benji’s hand. “Lake Meriwether, and this is my friend, Mia. Now give us all the deets!”

“I’m sorry?” Benji said, looking a little blindsided.

“You know, name, age, where you’re from, relationship status – please, please tell us you’re single,” Lake begged, sending Benji a flirtatious smile. Victor chanced a quick look at Felix who was drooping despondently beside him.

Mia rolled her eyes. “You really don’t have to tell us any of that. It’s nice to meet you, by the way. Sorry about all this.”

Lake elbowed Mia none too subtly. “But, like, feel free to share as much as you’re comfortable with! Everyone here is so excited to have a new student this year. Most of us have known each other since kindergarten, we’re all kinda bored of each other.”

“Well,” Benji said. “I’m Benji Campbell, seventeen, just moved here from Georgia. My mom’s teaching at the college. And I have a boyfriend, actually, back in Atlanta.”

There was an uncomfortably long silence, during which Victor was pretty certain every one of his bodily functions had shut down and left him suddenly and horribly paralyzed. He wasn’t sure he was even breathing. It wasn’t just him, the others seemed a little shocked by this information, too, judging by how long it took anyone to say something.

“Oh,” Lake said, too loudly. “Oh, so you’re...”

Benji was starting to look a little less confident, probably taken aback by how weird they were all being. But then he just came right out and said it, with zero hesitation, like it was no big deal at all. “Gay? Yeah, I am.”

It felt like Victor’s tiny world was imploding. Stuff like this didn’t happen at Brandon High, he’d never met an out gay person before, and he had no idea how to deal with this. There were so many thoughts and feelings converging within him just then, he felt like he was spiraling through a whirlpool of confusion. There was anxiety, because what if someone had seen the way he’d been staring at Benji? And what if Benji himself could see something in Victor, something that might make him realize that Victor was… that Victor might be like him? Could gay people sense each other somehow? Was that a thing? Would Benji be able to just look at him and _know?_

There was jealousy too, at how at ease Benji was with his identity, how comfortable he appeared to be in his own skin. What would it be like to feel so sure of yourself, so unafraid?

And there was a pang of disappointment that Victor was scared to analyze, because he was certain it had everything to do with Benji telling them he had a boyfriend back home.

It was all so much, he barely noticed when Lake and Mia invited Benji to eat with them and they walked away, leaving Victor standing there stupidly watching them leave.

“Wow, that was unexpected,” Felix said. “I gotta admit, I was hella relieved to hear him say he was gay.”

Victor whipped around to stare at him. “What? Why?”

Felix stared back pointedly. “Uh, did you not see the way Lake was looking at him? Like he’d been dipped in chocolate and she just wanted to eat him up?”

Victor’s mind could not deal with that mental image right now.

“I mean, I get that the guy is good looking, but jeez. Show a little self-restraint,” Felix, a person with very little self-restraint, complained. Victor would’ve rolled his eyes if he wasn’t in so much inner turmoil at that moment. His best friend shrugged. “But Benji seems pretty chill. Maybe we could hang sometime.”

Victor just nodded woodenly, and followed Felix toward the cafeteria. Through the crowd ahead of them, his height allowed him to catch glimpses of Benji’s golden hair shining under the fluorescent lighting. Benji reached up to run a hand through it, and at his side Victor’s fingers were buzzing with the desire to find out if it was as soft as it looked.

That feeling of dread that he’d woken up with that morning, like a vise around his chest? It had doubled-down, gripping him harder than ever. Victor had no idea how he was going to survive this school year.

Thankfully the rest of Victor’s day was normal, nice even, with very little homework to worry about yet and a family dinner that just consisted of small talk and hardly any sniping for once. Even Pilar was in a decent mood, excited about seeing all her friends again and the date Eric had taken her on after school. Isabel teased her about it good-naturedly and Armando joked about making sure this kid was good enough for his only daughter. They didn’t even nag Victor about when he’d finally get a girlfriend, and he let out a breath of relief, stowing away his usual excuses for the next time. Later, Adrian demanded a bedtime story from Victor, who was happy to oblige, and then it was time for him to go to bed as well.

It was starting to get late. The minutes were ticking by painfully slow, while Victor just lay on his back and stared at the shadows on the ceiling. He couldn’t sleep. The rest of the day had been so normal, but on the inside everything felt like a tangled mess. He couldn’t believe this was happening again, that what had happened at camp over the summer hadn’t been some one off thing after all, like he’d been so desperate to believe.

He grabbed his phone and scrolled through his photos until he found the one he’d looked at far too often already. The familiar curves of Daniel’s face appeared, smiling, sitting in a camping chair next to Victor. They were both in shorts and hoodies, Daniel’s feet propped up on a piece of firewood, a hint of smoke encasing them in a soft haze. One of the other counselors had posted the photo last month along with a bunch of others from camp on her Facebook, and something about this one had compelled Victor to save it. Maybe he’d liked the way they’d looked, sitting close together, Victor’s knee almost touching Daniel’s thigh. Maybe it had been the way the firelight had illuminated Daniel’s face.

Victor sucked in a deep breath _(was he really doing this again?)_ , a thread of shame already beginning to unfurl in his stomach, and swiped over to the next photo. Daniel again, standing in front of a lake, one of the other guys in the background about to wade in. His eyes were crinkled with laughter, dark hair plastered wetly to his forehead, wearing just his swim shorts and jokingly flexing his arms for the camera. His tan skin was damp and shining in the bright sunlight. Another photo Victor had saved without letting himself think about why he was doing it; another photo he’d looked at too often and for too long.

Nothing had ever happened between them, but there had been moments when Daniel’s gaze seemed to snag on Victor’s own, when he’d sat just a little too close, shoulder bumping warmly against Victor’s and sending a shiver down his spine. One night, alone in the cabin, Victor had thought that maybe, maybe Daniel would lean forward and they’d…

But nothing had ever happened.

Even completely alone, lying there in the darkness where no one could see him, Victor felt a little light-headed, his face too hot, his grip on the phone shaky. He was so ashamed of the way his body was reacting to the picture, especially knowing that it was hardly the first time. How many times now had he looked? How many times had he… had he thought about Daniel and looked at the picture when he…

Suddenly overcome by self-disgust, Victor slammed his phone down against the mattress, hands coming up to cover his face like he was trying to hide. From who? God? Himself? He didn’t even know.

And now it was happening again. Soft, brown hair, shining eyes, broad shoulders… a stream of clear water arcing up to kiss lips that Victor could see so perfectly in his mind. Was this who he was now? Was there really no escaping these feelings? Why was it getting so hard to breathe?

Chest aching, Victor ground the palms of his hands against his eyes until bursts of color appeared like tiny explosions. The room was too small. The walls with their basketball trophies and posters, their nearly sixteen years of childhood memories, painted blue as if to remind the world that he was just a regular boy, had in the darkness become a prison cell. Solitary confinement, that’s what this was. He was so alone. Victor’s chest heaved as it struggled to find enough air.

An unknowable period of time later, the panic subsided, leaving behind that familiar sensation of numbness. Victor laid there, floating, until exhaustion overwhelmed him and he slept.

Maybe what everyone had been telling him was true, and there was a merciful God in heaven, and He was looking out for Victor, because a week went by without him really running into Benji much. It turned out they only had one class together, Chemistry, and there hadn’t really been any opportunities for interaction between them. Benji didn’t seem to be having much trouble making friends, already welcomed into the fold by Lake and Mia’s group, who Victor had seen him eating lunch with most days. Sure, everyone had been gossiping non-stop about the new, openly-gay kid at school, but surprisingly everyone seemed to be acting pretty normally around him. At least, as far as Victor could tell from only spending one class with him three days a week and catching sight of him occasionally at lunch.

It was what they said when Benji wasn’t around that had Victor desperately burying everything he was feeling as deep as he could. The icy weight of anxiety in his belly just grew more and more by the day, each new slur or rude joke adding its mass to the black hole that was tearing him up inside.

Even though he rarely saw Benji at school the rest of that first week, it felt like he was constantly followed around by the idea of Benji anyway. As if Victor wasn’t already having trouble forgetting about him, he was reminded of him all the time in the form of whispers and jokes, and by Friday Victor reached his breaking point.

Felix and Victor had been eating lunch with more or less the same group of friends since the start of high school, although some of them were friends from farther back. First, there were Matt and Feña, the other two Latino kids in his circle of friends. He’d known Feña pretty much as long as Felix, since they’d all been in the same class in kindergarten and her family went to the same church as Victor’s. The three of them had grown up going to each other’s birthday parties and playing after school together, but she’d been hanging out less and less outside of school since freshman year. Her parents owned a bakery in town and the older she got the more time they expected her to spend helping out in the shop or babysitting her younger siblings. Matt had joined their group of friends in sixth grade, the year he’d moved to Brandon from Houston. He was on the basketball team as well, so aside from Felix he was the friend Victor spent the most time with.

And then there was Alicia, who they’d started hanging out with last year, after she and Felix had bonded over a mutual love of really weird stuff that Victor didn’t get, like Japanese comics and old black and white sci-fi movies. With Alicia came Jeremy, her boyfriend since spring of freshman year. Jeremy was basically Victor’s least favorite person in the group. Every other thing he said was either a complaint or an insult, and Victor really did not get what Alicia saw in him.

The six of them were eating at their usual spot in the cafeteria on Friday when it happened.

“You guys meet the new kid yet?” Jeremy began, “You know, the queer one?”

Felix frowned. “I’m not sure it’s okay for you to call him that...”

Jeremy rolled his eyes, his lips already curling down into his usual snide expression. “Whatever. If they can name a stupid gay TV show Queer Eye, then I’m pretty sure I get to say it. Anyway, guess who was unlucky enough to get the locker next to his in P. E.?”

Victor stared down at the sandwich in his hands, his appetite gone. He didn’t dare look up.

To Victor’s left, Matt started snickering. “Dude, you know what they say: don’t drop the soap.”

“Hey, just ‘cause his locker’s next to mine, doesn’t mean I have to shower next to him, too. Trust me, I’ll make sure my bare ass is a safe distance away,” Jeremy laughed.

It had been such a long week, and it was only the first week back. Every day Victor had been overhearing crap like this, and every single time it had made that cold edge of fear dig in a little harder, a little deeper. Pretty soon it was going to cut his heart right out of his chest. That horrible, claustrophobic feeling was coming over him again, making it so hard to breathe. He just kept staring down at the bread in his hands and wishing he could sink right into the ground and disappear.

“Guys, seriously,” Alicia snapped, looking uncharacteristically annoyed with Jeremy when she was usually so tolerant of his bullshit. “Knock it off. You’re being such dicks right now.”

“Agreed,” Felix chimed in.

“Jesus, when did you guys turn into the PC police?” Matt fired back. “We’re just joking, relax already.”

Feña looked up from her phone, which had been occupying her full attention for the last five minutes, and rested her chin in her hand while she gazed longingly in Benji’s direction. “It’s such a major loss that that new guy is gay. He is the hottest thing I’ve seen since we got to watch Andrew Spencer run the mile shirtless.”

She grinned at Alicia, who giggled and mimed fanning herself.

“I know you guys said he has a boyfriend, but do you think I could turn him? I could say I was doing it for Jesus,” Feña said, and then she and Matt dissolved into laughter.

“That’s not funny,” Felix warned them, but they clearly weren’t listening to him.

Victor was going to throw up. He couldn’t be here anymore. He couldn’t sit here and listen to this.

Alicia’s voice finally startled him into looking up for more than a second. “Victor, are you okay? You’re looking kinda pale.”

“Uh, yeah, just, like a weird stomach ache,” Victor mumbled, rising jerkily out of his seat. “I’m just gonna go to the bathroom.”

Victor barely made it into a bathroom stall in time before his half eaten sandwich and whatever else he’d eaten that day was suddenly expelled. He crouched over the toilet bowl, the scent of urine and vomit stinging his senses, and closed his eyes as another wave of nausea rolled over him. He hated this so much. Why did he have to feel like this? Why couldn’t he just be like everyone else?

At basketball practice that first week, Coach Harris had handed Victor a bill for fees which was considerably steeper than it’d been the year before.

“Sorry boys, the school renovated the court over the summer and we’re still catching up on the expenses, so players are going to have to start chipping in more for uniforms, trips, all that stuff. Make sure you get the payments back to me by next week.”

The bill was nearly five hundred dollars, and Victor was well aware that money was already tight at home. How could he ask his parents for so much? Last year it had only been two hundred, and he’d forfeited his allowance for weeks to help out. He had some money saved up after working as a counselor at Camp Lewis over the summer, but it wasn’t all that much.

Aside from doing the counselor gig and some odd jobs here and there, Victor had never really had a job before. He’d thought about it a lot, as a way to help out at home, but his mother had always insisted that they were handling everything and Victor should stay focused on his school work. Not to mention he was already pretty busy with basketball. But, looking down at the bill in his hand, Victor decided that it was time to start pulling his own weight.

After practice, Victor showered and changed as fast as he possibly could, trying not to think about what had been said at lunch. He was aware of Matt nearby, talking with some of the other guys, all of them wearing very little, and he kept his gaze trained carefully on his own locker.

 _Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look_ , he chanted in his head, over and over, but unfortunately not looking meant that as he grabbed his bag to leave, he didn’t realize someone was passing behind him, and he slammed into them when he turned.

Andrew Spencer swore as he shot a hand out to catch his balance against the wall, nearly losing his grip on the towel around his waist. Victor immediately felt his face get hot as he stared at Andrew in horror.

“You like what you see?”

 _Oh my god._ “I wasn’t-” Victor protested, his voice hitting an embarrassingly high pitch.

Andrew just laughed and shoved Victor’s shoulder lightly. “Relax, Salazar, I’m just messing with you. But watch where you’re going next time. You’re gonna kill somebody with those two left feet.”

Getting away from school and walking into the center of town could not have felt like more of a relief after the day Victor had had. He spent the afternoon at the library getting some homework done and looking around online to see what job openings were available in Brandon. Things tended to fill up quickly with all the college students, so there weren’t a ton of options, but it being the beginning of the academic year did help. He made a list of places to apply at over the weekend and headed home.

It was his day to feed the animals, so after putting his stuff in his room he switched his good sneakers for his boots and headed out to the barn. It was stiflingly hot inside, the scent of hay and dirt sweetly cloying as he grabbed a couple of buckets and filled them up with feed.

Both horses were already waiting for him by their usual spot at the fence, Beau shuffling around impatiently at Victor’s approach. A huge oak tree, the biggest one on their land, spread its broad limbs over the horses where they were crowded around the trough, and the shady reprieve from the heat of the barn felt like a blessing. He set down the buckets and went about grooming the horses while they ate, brushing them down and looking over their hooves.

Victor took his time with them that night, enjoying the quiet outside of the house and the feel of the horses’ soft, velvety noses against his palm when he offered them a couple of carrots as a treat. It was always more fun feeding and grooming Beau and Elsa (Adrian got to name her) than it was dealing with the chickens, who were noisy and whose enclosure never smelled great, no matter how used to it he was by this point. And even though the horses were equally loved and cared for by pretty much everyone in the Salazar family, Beau had always kinda felt like his, somehow. He spent a little extra time with him, just running his hand over the chocolatey brown fur of Beau’s neck.

By the time he’d taken care of all his chores, he was sweaty and his stomach was rumbling loudly, but he still didn’t want to head inside. Despite the heat, it was so nice and peaceful out there, and Victor wanted to take all of it, the orangey-pink sunset, the quiet, the smell of earth and plants and living things, and store it away inside of himself where he could reach for it the next time the world felt too small.

He leaned back against the fence and watched the sun sink lower on the horizon, careful not to snag his jeans on the cactus that edged the pasture. There were birds singing in the old oak overhead, the horses snuffling quietly as they chewed their hay, the chickens a murmuring riot of soft noise in the background. When Victor was out here, it felt like everything in nature was just as it should be. And maybe, a hopeful part of him wished, that could include him, too.


	2. I Took No Time with the Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: internalized homophobia

Saturday morning Victor woke up early, showered, and made pancakes for the family. He mixed in diced apples and cinnamon, maybe because he needed this to be a good day, after all the stress of the past week.

As they all started to dig in around the table, Isabel leaned over to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Mm, _que rico! Gracias, querido,_ this was just what I needed.”

“Mom, can I have more syrup?” Adrian asked, already reaching for the bottle.

Armando snatched it away, eyeing the seven year old’s plate critically. “You already have more than enough.”

Adrian started to pout, and Isabel complained that Armando was being too strict again, and then what had started out as a nice family breakfast deteriorated rapidly into yet another argument. Across the table from him, Pilar sat slouched in her chair texting and ignoring everyone, while one of Victor’s apple pancakes grew cold on her plate. Tired of all of them, Victor stuffed the last bite of pancake into his mouth and rushed out of the room. So much for his attempt to keep everyone happy with good food.

The walk into town from his house took nearly thirty minutes, so Victor popped in his earbuds and put on an upbeat playlist to hopefully get his spirits up for job hunting. It was about eight thirty by the time he reached town and already in the triple digits, the Texan summer dragging on into September as it always did. He had sweated through his t-shirt, unfortunately, but there wasn’t much he could do about that; thank god he’d worn a dark color at least. He seriously couldn’t wait to get his license.

The first stop on his list was a diner. He’d been there plenty of times with his family, but never really realized before just how hectic the place was in the mornings. A harried looking bus boy rushed past him when he walked up to the counter to ask for an application for just that position, and he started to doubt whether this would be such a great place to work after all. Still, a job was a job.

Next up was a fast food place, then a trendy gastropub that told him he was too young to apply, and then a grocery store that turned out not be hiring after all, and finally by around eleven, a little coffee shop near the commons called Brasstown. From the minute he walked in the door he already liked it better than everywhere else he’d been that morning. The air conditioning was strong, the smell of coffee permeated the air in the best possible way, and the atmosphere was calm and quiet, no doubt aided by the folksy music playing softly in the background.

He walked up to the counter to get an application, feeling pretty good about this place, and was immediately flustered when none other than Benji Campbell turned around.

“Oh hey,” Benji said, smiling at him like they’d known each other for years.

Victor’s mind had gone completely blank, unable to process anything beyond how stunningly bright that smile was.

The silence stretched on and Benji began to frown. “Uh, I’m Benji. From school, remember? We met on Monday.”

“Oh, yeah, of course, I remember you,” Victor said, laughing awkwardly. “I mean. You know, we don’t get a lot of new people around here, so...”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Benji said, rolling his eyes. “It’s kinda intense being the new guy here. Um, I didn’t actually get your name the other day.”

“Oh. I’m Victor.”

Benji extended his hand, smile back and just as blindingly bright as before. Victor swallowed, mouth impossibly dry, and reached out hesitantly to shake hands. The instant their skin touched it felt like an electrical shock had just surged up Victor’s arm, straight to his pounding heart.

“Nice to meet you.” Benji said, giving his hand a little squeeze before letting go. “So, what can I get for you?”

“Um, an application? I was thinking of applying here.”

“Oh cool, well things have slowed down now, so why don’t you come on back and we’ll talk?” Benji waved him past the counter. “I just so happen to be the assistant manager.”

“Really? But you just moved here-”

Benji grinned. “I may be new to Brandon, but I’m not new to the barista life. I actually worked for another Brasstown up in Atlanta for a little over a year, and this location is new so they’ve had a few positions to fill. Lucky us, right?”

Victor just nodded nervously, following Benji over to the somewhat intimidating looking espresso machine.

“So Victor, you have any experience making coffee?”

He ducked his head, already feeling his cheeks getting hot. “Well, I have a lot of experience _drinking_ coffee...”

Benji chuckled. “Relax, it’s not exactly rocket science. Once you can pull a shot of espresso, you can pretty much make anything.”

He picked up a tool from the counter, something that to Victor looked vaguely like an ice cream scoop. “Here, watch. First, you take the portafilter,” he indicated the thing in his hand, “and pack it full of coffee grounds. Make sure it’s really tight.”

Victor swallowed hard, the skin on his cheeks feeling like it was about to melt right off his face. The muscles in Benji’s arms shifted with the movement of his hands as he pressed the grounds into the filter, and Victor was completely mesmerized.

“You see how tight that is?”

Benji held it up for him to look. It was taking every ounce of his strength not to pass out just then, he was feeling so overheated, and he really, really didn’t trust himself to speak. The best he could manage was an “Mmhm” and a quick nod.

Putting the portafilter in place, Benji lifted his hands up to shake his hair out of his face, which was one of the sexiest things Victor had ever seen, and then he poured some milk into a metal cup. Even an act as mundane as pouring milk looked unspeakably erotic when Benji was the one doing it, with his tight t-shirt and strong hands and perfect everything, and standing so close Victor could feel the heat from his body where it was nearly pressed up against his own.

“While that brews, we just have to steam the milk.” He placed the cup under a long metal tube and flipped a switch. There was a hiss of steam, and Benji reached out to place Victor’s hand on the cup. Victor’s breath hitched. “Here, you try,” Benji said, and then smiled up at Victor, his eyes warm and brown and his face so very close. “There you go. You’re a natural.”

Benji’s skin was so soft and warm where their hands were touching on the cup, his eyes lingering on Victors’, and for just a second Victor’s gaze dropped down to Benji’s lips. He felt like he was losing his mind. He felt like he might do something insane right then, like lean just that little bit forward, and-

And then there was an explosion of hot foam all over both of them, but mostly spraying across Victor’s chest, and they both jumped back in shock. Benji rushed to put down the cup and grab a towel, one hand on Victor’s bicep as he started to pat him down. Benji’s hands all over him was just way more than he could handle, and Victor stuttered out an apology, already reaching for his backpack.

“This was a bad idea, let’s just forget it ever happened,” he begged, and then before Benji had a chance to reply he was fleeing the cafe as fast as his long legs would carry him.

He mentally berated himself the entire walk home, for being a klutz and humiliating himself and for, once again, being overcome with feelings that he was _not supposed to have_ for another boy. It was nearly lunch time now, but instead of feeling hungry he just felt like he was going to be sick again. Shame and disgust roiled in his stomach, and his head pounded in the late morning heat. He nearly jumped out of his skin when a car suddenly pulled up beside him and the driver honked at him.

The passenger door opened, and Felix leaned over the seat to shout, “Need a ride, buddy?”

The air conditioning, while not really strong enough in Felix’s old car, was still a welcome relief. He sunk into the seat and smiled gratefully at his best friend.

“What are you up to today? Wanna hang?” Felix asked.

“Sure, I don’t really have anything to do this afternoon.” Victor remembered his parents’ raised voices at breakfast that morning, and said, “Can we go to your house?”

Felix got a shifty, uncomfortable look on his face that made Victor feel immediately suspicious. “Oh, uh, sorry, but I don’t think it’s really a good time...”

“Oh. That’s okay.” It wasn’t really fair to feel disappointed, he knew that Felix’s mom was sick a lot of the time, but he really didn’t want to go back to his own family drama. He honestly didn’t even remember the last time they had hung out at Felix’s… it must have been last spring? Or last winter maybe? He felt like a bit of an idiot for not noticing.

“Um, how’s your mom doing? Is everything okay?”

Victor had known Felix since they were both five years old and they got sent to the principal’s office for accidentally-on-purpose dumping a huge bottle of glue all over Kieran Gallagher’s desk (to be fair, Kieran had totally deserved it for making fun of Felix’s hand me down clothes). So he could tell that Felix was lying the minute the words came out of his mouth, but he also knew that things with Felix’s mom had been complicated ever since she’d gotten sick, and he didn’t really want to push too hard at what he knew was a painful subject.

“She’s fine, nothing to worry about,” Felix said, smile not reaching his eyes. “She’s had some ups and downs lately but I think things are gonna get better soon.”

When they were in seventh grade, Felix’s mom had been diagnosed with cancer. His dad hadn’t been around since Felix was a baby, so it was just Felix and his mom at home, and with her being so seriously ill things had been pretty rough. Felix had spent a lot of time sleeping over at Victor’s house that year while she underwent treatment and eventually started to recover.

But even though she’d overcome cancer, she hadn’t really been the same afterward. Lisa Weston had lost her job and begun spending more and more time at home as she continued to struggle with the toll that the disease had taken on her. Victor knew that she had issues with chronic pain and often didn’t feel well enough to get out of bed. The Salazars frequently helped out by sending over food or doing a bit of house or yard maintenance when it was needed.

“If y’all need anything, just let us know,” Victor reminded him. “You know my mom has no problem sending over a _pastel_ _ó_ _n_ anytime you guys want it.”

Felix’s smile didn’t fail to reach his eyes that time as he grinned at Victor. “Oh man, Isabel’s gonna regret you saying that, ‘cause I could eat her cooking like every single day. So, where to then? Should we just head back into town?”

“I dunno… I guess we can just chill at my place. If my parents haven’t cooled off yet we can always go hang in the barn. And, you know, probably die of heat stroke out there. But I don’t really know what else to do today.”

When they got to the Salazar house, it was surprisingly peaceful. Isabel was out with Adrian doing some extra back to school clothes shopping, Pilar was off doing whatever it was Pilar did those days, and Armando seemed to be busy at his desk in the office. Felix and Victor made themselves a lunch of last night’s leftovers, and settled in on the couch to watch a movie.

The rest of the afternoon was so refreshingly normal that Victor almost completely forgot about the disaster that was his encounter with Benji that morning at Brasstown. He joked around with Felix about the bad dialogue in the movie, they played some video games, Felix stayed for dinner, and for the first time in a while Victor didn’t feel like such an imposter in his own house. But later that night, when he was in bed messing around on his phone, a call from an unknown number came through.

“Hello?” Victor answered.

“Victor? Hey, this is Benji. Look, I know that the barista training didn’t exactly go stellar today, but all the other applicants were college students with, like, the most ridiculously complicated schedules, so… basically the job is yours if you want it, and I’m kinda hoping you do.”

Victor laughed a little in response to all that, charmed by Benji’s rambling despite how embarrassed he probably should feel after the morning’s events. “Uh, okay. Yeah, I’ll take it.”

“Awesome. Guess we’ll be seeing a lot of each other from now on.”

It was almost impossible to ignore the way Victor’s heart sped up at that, the way it felt like it was swelling too big in his chest with happiness. _Maybe I can do this,_ Victor thought, _maybe this could be fun._

Another part of his mind, a voice threaded through with fear, whispered back, _Or maybe being near Benji everyday will be a complete and utter disaster…_

“Yeah,” Victor said, shutting down that voice before it could ruin this thing that felt so good. “Looking forward to it.”

“Okay, see you tomorrow then. And pretty much every other day after school until the end of time.”

“Can’t wait.”

The call ended and Victor flopped back on the bed, remembering how good he’d felt when he first stepped into the cafe that morning, how much nicer it had seemed then any of the other places he’d applied, how much he wanted this money in order to help out his family. Remembered how it had felt to work beside Benji. To feel Benji’s hand touching his, that shock of _something_ that had shot through him when they touched…

Benji had a boyfriend, Victor reminded himself sternly. Whatever Victor was going through, however confused he was right now about himself and what he wanted, it didn’t really matter, because Benji wasn’t available anyway. So he just needed to focus on earning some money and not let himself get distracted.

Why did it seem like that would be much easier said than done?

  


The next day, Victor got stopped in the hallway by Feña who wanted to borrow a textbook since she’d accidentally left her own at home, and then he was nearly late to Chemistry. He slipped in the door just as the bell went off, earning him a less than impressed look from his teacher, and stopped short when he saw there were only two empty seats left. One was next to Mia Brooks, since it seemed that Lake was absent that day, and the other… The other was next to Benji.

_Mia or Benji. Benji or Mia._

Ms. Thomas looked at him in exasperation. “Would you mind taking a seat, Mr. Salazar, so we can get started?”

Victor looked back at Benji and caught what might have been the start of a smile, but in a sudden panic he looked away, rushing forward to take the spot next to Mia. When he glanced over at her, she gave him a friendly look and shifted her notebook over to make space for him.

“All right, now that we’re all settled, we’re going to get to work today on a project that you’ll be completing between now and midterms. It’ll make up about twenty percent of your final grade, so I expect to have your full attention while I go over the instructions. First of all, you’ll be working in pairs with the person you’re currently sitting next to. The topic for the project...”

At the end of the class, Victor and Mia stood and began to gather up their stuff.

“So, Victor, maybe we should exchange numbers?” Mia said. “It sounds like we’ll probably need to get together outside of class at some point to work on this thing.”

“Sure,” Victor said, pulling out his phone. She told him her phone number, and he sent off a quick text with nothing but an emoji in it.

Mia laughed. “A sushi roll? Really?”

“Well, it’s almost lunchtime, and I like sushi, so… Yeah, sorry it’s kinda weird.”

“No, it’s cool. I like sushi, too. I’ve been wanting to try and make it myself sometime, actually, ever since I watched that documentary, _Jiro Dreams of Sushi_.”

“Oh yeah, that was really good. Kinda sad, I guess, but moving.” Felix had made him watch it when they’d hung out over the summer, and he’d enjoyed it more than he’d expected. It wasn’t the kind of thing he normally would’ve chosen to watch.

Mia gave him a look like she was seeing him for the first time, despite the fact that they’d technically known each other since at least third grade, having both been born and raised in Brandon. But their paths had never really crossed much over the years, with different social groups at school and the fact that they lived in totally different worlds outside of school. Victor had heard that Mia’s dad was some kind of dean at the college and they lived in one of the biggest houses in town. He’d never been there, but he’d seen pictures from some of the parties at her place online. It looked like a palace compared to his own house.

“You know, you’ve got hidden depths, Victor,” Mia said, her eyes sparkling in a way that made it clear why everyone thought she was one of the prettiest girls at school. Her hair was up in a bun today, but a few perfect ringlets curled around her face. “I never would’ve thought you’d like stuff like that.”

Victor just shrugged, aware of the fact that some of their classmates were watching this exchange, and had a feeling that people might end up gossiping about it later. Mia Brooks had bothered to take notice of him. His social status would no doubt be going up a notch or two by the end of the day. Not that Victor really cared about popularity, to be honest, he was fine with being average in that area. But Mia noticing him, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

“I’m full of all kinds of surprises,” Victor said, an unexpected confidence bubbling up in him as Mia laughed. “Did you know that I’m also pretty talented in the kitchen? Maybe we could try making sushi together sometime.”

“Yeah,” Mia agreed, with a smile that was just a little bit shy. “I think I’d like that.”

“Hey, Mia, Victor.”

Victor jumped a little, looking over to find Benji standing near them. There was something different about the smile on his face just then; it seemed smaller somehow than the ones Victor had seen before.

“Oh, hey Benji. Wanna walk to the cafeteria with me?” Mia offered, shouldering her backpack.

Benji nodded. “Sure.” He looked over, met Victor’s eyes for a moment. “See you this afternoon, right? You said you’d do it, no backing out now and leaving me with the Brandon College hipsters.”

Victor laughed. “No worries, I’ll be there. See you later.”

Somehow the Brandon High School gossip chain traveled the distance from the Chemistry classroom to the cafeteria faster than Victor himself did, because by the time he sat down with his friends they’d already heard the news.

“Dude!” Matt exclaimed, clapping Victor on the back. “Well done, man! Who knew you had it in you!”

“He may be a late bloomer, but when he blooms, he really goes for it,” Feña teased.

Victor frowned at his friends. “What the hell are you guys talking about?”

Felix nudged him, grinning hugely. “Oh, just your unbelievable success with Mia Brooks today. It’s true, right? You asked her out?”

“Oh,” Victor stammered, “Uh, well, I don’t know about that… I mean, I said we should hang out sometime and make sushi and she said that would be cool...”

“Holy shit, Victor!” Felix practically shouted. Victor scooted away from him, wincing. “You have a date! With Mia Brooks!”

Victor rolled his eyes. “Why do you keep saying her full name like that?”

“That is so sweet. I’m really happy for you, Victor,” Alicia said. “You two would be so cute together!”

“Ugh, why are you guys all making such a big deal out of this?” Jeremy complained around a mouthful of food. Victor looked away from him in disgust. He was always talking with his mouth full, and sometimes little specks of food would spatter the table around him. It was at least half of the reason Victor always tried to sit as far away from him as possible. The other half was just his generally miserable personality. “Nothing’s even really happened. For all you know she was just trying to be polite.”

Feña glared at him. “Hey, why do you always have to rain on everybody’s parade, Jeremy?”

“Well, because knowing Victor, there’s no way this is actually gonna go anywhere.” Everyone started to protest at that, so Jeremy hurried to continue. “C’mon, you know I’m right. I mean, he’s never had a girlfriend before, or even really been on a date. He’s so painfully shy around the opposite sex he wouldn’t even know what to do with a girl like Mia.”

There was another round of heated protests from everyone, except for Matt who seemed to be nodding at Jeremy in agreement.

Felix, “Victor has so been on a date before!”

Feña, waving toward herself and Alicia, “Victor’s never been shy around us! What, are we not girly enough to qualify?!”

Alicia, “What the hell does that mean, ‘a girl like Mia’?!”

Even Jeremy, usually unfazed by other people’s reactions to the things that came out of his mouth, looked taken aback by this deluge. “Shit, would y’all chill? I’m just saying, don’t go freaking out and planning their wedding already.”

Alicia crossed her arms over her chest, sitting back and glaring at her boyfriend. “I repeat, what the hell does ‘a girl like Mia’ mean?”

Jeremy’s pale skin went a shade whiter in the face of his girlfriend’s wrath. “Nothing! It doesn’t mean anything!”

“Oh man, you really put your foot in it this time,” Matt said, snickering.

Alicia shoved her chair away from the table and stormed off, Jeremy rushing to follow, and a moment of silence fell over the rest of them.

Felix’s eyebrows were near his hairline. “Wow. That was kinda dramatic.”

“You know she’s been worried about him chasing after other girls,” Feña explained, looking pissed on behalf of her friend. “She told me he sent her some weird texts the other day that she’s pretty sure were meant to be for some other girl. Anyway, just ignore all of his bullshit, Victor. Mia seems really cool, and I’m sure you guys will have a great time together.”

Matt patted his shoulder. “Yeah man, you got this.”

“Uh, Victor,” Felix said. “I mean, yes, you’ve totally got this, but do you actually know anything about making sushi?”

Victor laughed. “It’s just a piece of fish on top of rice, right? You don’t even have to cook it. How hard can it be?”

“Hoo boy,” Felix said, shaking his head. “Don’t worry, buddy, I’m here to help.”

  


After school, Felix gave him a ride to Brasstown and made plans to help Victor with his Japanese cooking skills later that week. The possibility of actually hanging out with Mia on what might end up being a date had him feeling pretty good about things. Mia was really pretty, everyone agreed on that, and she seemed like a cool person, too, and Victor could just put aside his confusing feelings for Benji, who wasn’t even available, and try to focus on her instead.

This mindset allowed him to relax enough to get through his first day of working next to Benji without any humiliating accidents, like exploding foam all over both of them or thinking _(overly much)_ about doing anything inappropriate with his new co-worker. His ability to finally relax a little around Benji also made working with him really fun. Benji was a surprisingly good teacher, taking his time to explain exactly what all of the drinks were, how to make them, how to use the point of sales system, and whatever else Victor needed to know. He was so patient, never getting annoyed with Victor if he made a mistake or needed to have something explained more than once.

But actually, Victor found himself really enjoying the work and picking most things up pretty quickly. He loved the smell of the brewing coffee and tea, and the quiet atmosphere of the cafe. Although, by the time ten o’clock came around and Benji locked the doors, he’d had about as much of hipster cover bands as he could take.

“Good work today,” Benji said as he tossed a rag at Victor. They started to spray and wipe down the tables. “You caught on really fast for a first-time barista.”

Warmth filled Victor at the praise and he ducked his head to hide his smile. “Thanks. It was actually a lot of fun. Although, I gotta say, six hours of easy listening is not so easy to listen to.”

Benji laughed. “Seriously. If I have to listen to one more gentle song about a girl forgiving her father… But hey, it’s just us here now, if you wanna give me your phone I can hook it up to the speakers and we can listen to something more fun.”

He quickly tried to recall what apps were open on his phone and whether or not there might be anything embarrassing or incriminating, but Benji was looking over at him expectantly, so Victor unlocked his phone, handed it over, and hoped for the best.

“ _Baby Shark_ is your most listened to song?”

 _Oh god._ Victor kinda hated himself for naively trusting the universe not to embarrass him yet again. “I play it for my little brother, okay? He’s seven. And… I might also find its predictability soothing.”

The look Benji sent him at that, like he found Victor’s dorkiness charming, made the embarrassment worth it. And then he tapped the screen and the opening beats of “Call Me Maybe” came on from the speakers overhead. The universe clearly hated Victor and wanted him to suffer.

“Really?” Benji said, biting his lip to hold back a laugh. He sang a line from the chorus, shimmying a little to the music, eyes lit up with the joy he was getting from teasing Victor. “Never would’ve pegged you for a Carly Rae fan.”

“This used to be my jam when I was little, I made up this whole dance just to crack up my mom,” Victor explained, and then immediately wished he hadn’t.

“Let’s see it then.”

“What?” _Oh my god, why had he said that?_

“Your dance! C’mon, you have to show me now.”

“All I remember is it involved a lot of spinning and… rump-shaking.”

“Like this?” Benji started moving, shaking his hips to the rhythm of the song, and Victor shook his head, trying not to laugh.

“No, no, no, you have to twist, like this. You have to put more rump in it.”

He demonstrated, dancing like he hadn’t done since he was eight and trying to make his mom smile. Benji tried to copy him, and then they were both messing around, dancing to the song, hips and shoulders bumping, and Victor couldn’t even remember the last time he’d smiled so much. Just like everything else he’d seen Benji do in the short time they’d known each other so far, he danced with a confidence that made Victor feel both jealous and drawn in, like if he could just get close enough to Benji, maybe some of it would rub off on him.

The song ended and _“Soy Yo”_ started up. They went back to wiping down the tables, but Benji kept swaying and nodding his head to the beat. Victor found himself wishing he could stay there all night, just the two of them and the music and no one else in the world to see or judge or say anything about it.

“I liked that,” Benji said when the song ended. “What band was that?”

“ _Bomba Estereo_ ,” Victor told him. “They’re a Colombian band. That’s where my dad’s family comes from, actually. One of my cousins told me about them.”

“Nice. I’ll look them up later.” Benji showed him how to clean the equipment behind the counter and where to put things away for the night. When they were finished, they headed into the locker room to grab their stuff. Benji was moving slowly, taking his time, like he wasn’t quite ready to head home yet either.

“Do you have a lot of family here?” Benji asked, leaning back against one of the lockers.

“Oh, yeah. Like, a ton of family. My dad’s parents and all of his siblings live in this area, and some of my mom’s family lives here, too. Most of my relatives live closer to Dallas and Fort Worth, though. What about you?”

“No, we don’t really know anyone in Texas,” Benji said. “We just moved here for my mom’s job. It’s kinda weird being here, to be honest. I never thought we’d leave Atlanta, but my mom’s department at Georgia State lost a lot of funding last year and they had to downsize, so here we are.”

“What do you think of it so far? It must be kinda a downgrade for you, moving to a tiny town like Brandon after Atlanta.”

Benji looked thoughtful. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I really know how to feel about it yet. There’s a lot I miss from back home, you know? My friends, my boyfriend, Derek, my old house… But it’s not all bad here.”

“It’s a lot more, uh, traditional though,” Victor said. He swallowed. “I mean, has it been hard for you? Living here?”

“What, you mean because I’m gay?” Victor nodded nervously. “Yeah, I guess so. No one’s really bothered me much at school so far, but I can tell a lot of people here aren’t really comfortable with it. My old school wasn’t perfect, but it was definitely easier being out there. Actually, a couple years ago, a guy named Simon Spier at my high school in Atlanta made this big coming out announcement online, declaring his love for this other guy, and then they ended up having their first kiss at the winter carnival in front of the whole school. The pictures of them on Instagram, kissing on the ferris wheel and not being afraid of who they are… it was so inspiring. It really helped me when I was coming out.”

“That’s really cool,” Victor said, trying to keep his tone neutral, but afraid to look at Benji in case something in his face gave away what he was actually feeling.

Benji put his bag over his shoulder and they made their way out of the locker room. “Yeah,” he said, with a smile that felt like it might be just for Victor, “but I’m sure I’ll get used to it here. Seems like there are some really good people in Brandon.”

That night when Victor was lying in bed and replaying the evening in his mind, dancing with Benji over and over again, talking with him in the quiet of the back room, he remembered the name: Simon Spier. He opened Instagram and jumped from Felix’s account to Lake’s and then found Benji, whose profile was fortunately set to public. He scrolled through the photos, taking in pictures of Benji with a taller, dark haired guy that he assumed must be Derek, the two of them out at a restaurant, posing for a selfie at a concert. There were pictures of Benji with other people, too, old friends from Atlanta he guessed, and a bunch of him in front of a microphone, guitar in his hands, which Victor stared at for far too long.

Eventually he made his way over to the list of accounts Benji followed and finally tracked down the one he was looking for: simon.says. He hesitated for a few seconds before pressing follow, hoping no one would notice it on his own account. It seemed unlikely anyone would, and no one but Benji would recognize who Simon Spier was anyway.

Before he could really think too much about what he was doing, he opened up the messenger and started typing, all of his frustration and stress and fear just pouring out in a torrent of words.

_Simon, you don’t know me, but I know someone who used to go to your high school and he told me all about your big night at the winter carnival, how you came out to everyone and changed things at your school. This guy I know, he said he was able to come out thanks to you. And that’s really cool, but all I can think is: it’s not fair._

_Why is it so much easier for everyone else? Why do people like you and this guy I met just get to come out to everyone like it’s no big deal and they all just accept you? Some of us don’t get to grow up in big cities with liberal parents who are totally cool and accepting of everything._

_I don’t even know how to figure out who I am, never mind declare it to the whole world. It’s not fair that my life has to be so much harder than yours._

_Victor_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bomba Estereo is the shit. I'm secretly hoping that Victor is subconsciously internalizing all the positivity and self-love in Soy Yo. As always, thanks for reading! Comments/feedback are much appreciated


	3. From Tokyo to Texas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: internalized homophobia, descriptions of panic attacks
> 
> Fun fact: I have actually traveled from Tokyo to Texas and back again. Not so fun: that is a seriously long flight...

On Tuesday, Victor got up the nerve to text Mia and ask her if she was serious about making sushi together sometime. He suggested getting together on Friday and sent the message before he could second guess himself and rewrite it for the fifth time. Her reply came back quickly to say that she’d love to, and Victor could come over to her house on Friday since she already had some of the stuff for making it.

The week passed by quickly, with the homework starting to pile on now that they were into the second week of the semester, and his job at Brasstown and basketball practice kept him busy. There still hadn’t been a reply from Simon Spier on his Instagram, but his busy schedule kept him from obsessing over it too much. His negative tone had probably just annoyed Simon and he resigned himself to never getting a response. His friends continued to tease him about his upcoming date with Mia, and Victor was pretty sure it wasn’t just his imagination that people at school seemed to notice him a bit more. He kept getting nods and greetings from classmates that usually just ignored him, and although he had thought he didn’t really care much about popularity, he couldn’t deny that it was kinda nice to be noticed.

Felix insisted on coming over to his house on Thursday night for a cooking lesson. Technically, it was a lesson for both of them, since neither of them had ever made sushi before or had a clue what they were doing, but they found some instructional videos on Youtube that were helpful and Isabel even joined them for a bit.

“No, Victor, use the other knife. The one with the white handle, it’s sharper than that other one. It should make it easier to cut the fish.” Isabel watched as he carefully sliced into the salmon filet, nodding in satisfaction when he did it correctly. She patted his cheek and grinned. “I can’t believe my little boy is finally going out on a date!”

“ _Mami_ , stop it,” Victor protested, pushing her away gently. “Why do you have to be so embarrassing?”

“Pretty sure that’s in my job description as a parent.”

“I don’t get why everyone thinks Victor has never gone on a date before,” Felix said, and Victor wanted to kick him. “It’s like everybody just forgot about that time last year with April.”

“What?” Isabel exclaimed, way too loudly. She smacked Victor on the arm. “Victor! You never told us about that!”

“Because it wasn’t a big deal, Mom,” Victor said, glaring darkly at his friend. Felix stared back guilelessly. “We only went out one time and it was super awkward and then we never talked again. End of story.”

Isabel was not so easily placated. “Your first real date _is_ a big deal, _cari_ _ño_. I can’t believe you didn’t even tell me. I thought we could talk about anything.”

She had no idea just how wrong she was about that. Most days Victor felt like everything about the face he showed the world was a lie, like behind it all was just a tangled web of shameful secrets. But there was no way he could ever reveal that to anyone, especially not his family, so Victor just nodded dumbly, unable to meet his mother’s eyes.

“ _Lo siento,_ _Mami_.”

The apology seemed to do the trick, because Isabel stopped staring at him and went back to spreading out an even layer of rice across a sheet of dried seaweed. “Well, I’m just glad I get to be in the loop this time. So tell me more about this Mia girl. What does she like to do? Is she cute? Ooh, do you have any pictures?”

She sounded so proud and excited. Victor didn’t know if he could do this. What if he screwed it all up and everyone realized there was something wrong with him?

Felix pulled out his phone, and found some photos of Mia from Facebook. “She is definitely cute, Mrs. Salazar.”

Armando walked into the kitchen just as Isabel was grabbing Felix’s phone out of his hand and taking a closer look at Mia’s picture. He grinned and leaned over Isabel’s shoulder to take a peek. “Oh, so this is the girl Victor’s going out with tomorrow. Way to go, _mijo_! She’s very pretty.”

Victor made himself smile and tried to relax. This was what he wanted, right? To be normal? To just focus on Mia and try to forget about everything else? So why did it make him feel so wrong?

“Thanks,” he muttered quickly, and snatched the phone away from his mother, who shot him a dirty look. He handed it back to Felix. “We should probably get these sushi rolls finished before it gets any later.”

Dinner that night was awkward, at least for Victor. His parents wouldn’t stop asking questions about Mia, which were mainly answered by Felix and Pilar (Pilar might have been a freshman, but pretty much everyone at school knew about Mia), Adrian spent the entire meal separating his sushi rolls into their base components and then just picking at the parts he was willing to tolerate, and Victor himself didn’t have much of an appetite either. Pilar made fun of their lumpy California Rolls, so not only were they sitting like lead in his stomach, but now he had a feeling he wouldn’t be impressing Mia much tomorrow night.

_I have to at least try_ , Victor resolved, forcing himself to swallow another piece of salmon _nigiri_. He glanced at his parents, who for once weren’t at each others’ throats, but instead reminiscing about their own first date back when they were in high school.

“You were so nervous,” Isabel teased, smiling fondly at Armando. “You tripped and almost fell right on your face when you tried to open the car door for me.”

“Lies,” Armando shot back, as Pilar started laughing at him. “I was nothing but suave. Anyway, weren’t you the one that laughed so hard Coke shot out of your nose at the restaurant?”

“Gross!” Adrian squealed in delight.

“Stop exaggerating, Mando, it was a _tiny_ bit of soda...”

Adrian giggled, and even Pilar was grinning.

They all looked so happy for once, and it was such a rare thing these days. Victor wanted to do anything he could to keep everything just like it was in that moment.

He was doing the right thing, going out with Mia tomorrow. His parents looked so happy and proud of him tonight, and that was all he wanted. It was all he could allow himself to want. He reminded himself silently, over and over that evening, as he cleaned up the food, did his homework, got ready for bed.

_I have to at least try to be normal._

As he was setting his alarm that night, a notification popped up on his Instagram. It might just be one of his friends, Matt was always sending him stupid memes on there, but his palms suddenly felt cold and damp with anxiety. He only hesitated for a second before opening the message. It was Simon.

_Hey Victor, you’re right. It’s not fair that things are so hard for you, and I really wish there was something I could do to change that._

_I did get pretty lucky. My parents are super liberal and they accepted me right away when I came out to them. My dad struggled with it a little, but we talked a lot and he’s been nothing but loving and supportive of me ever since. I wish that you could have that, too, but I know that for some families it can be more complicated._

_But even for me, figuring out who I was and declaring it to the whole world was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I needed to talk to someone back then, and I needed all the support I ended up getting from my friends and family. If you want, you can talk to me about what you’re going through. I may not understand all of it, since our situations are different, but I am a good listener._

_Whatever happens, just remember that figuring out who you are is important. No one can take that away from you, and no matter how hard things get at times, I promise that they will get better._

_Simon_

Victor put his phone down on the night stand, then turned off the light. He laid there in the dark for a long time, eyes closed, just thinking about what Simon had said. _Figuring out who you are is important. No one can take that away from you._

Maybe the problem was that he didn’t _want_ to know. Not really. Knowing the truth meant changing. It meant accepting the reality that he was trying so hard to run away from. He thought of his family’s faces, smiling and proud. Knowing would mean ruining everything.

_I was right before_ , Victor decided. _I have to try to be normal._

He read Simon’s message again, and then began to type out his response.

_Hi Simon,_

_Thanks for the words of wisdom. I should probably apologize for my first message. I didn’t mean to sound so angry. It’s not like the problems in my life have anything to do with you, and you don’t really deserve to get angsty messages from total strangers online._

_But, if you don’t mind talking to me about this stuff, can I ask you something personal? How did you figure out who you are?_

_See, the thing is, I live in a little town in Texas called Brandon. Things here, especially in my family, are traditional, and I’ve always felt so much pressure to just fit in and keep everyone else happy. But now there’s this girl, Mia, who really likes me. And I think I might like her, too. She’s funny, and kind, and we’re going on a date tomorrow. Did you ever meet a girl you felt connected to and think “maybe this could work”?_

_Victor_

Since Victor still didn’t have his license yet, he had to ask Felix to give him a ride over to Mia’s house the next day. It was embarrassing, but definitely better than his other options, which were to either walk over there and show up all sweaty or to get a ride from his mother, and he’d basically rather be dead than be the guy whose mother dropped him off for a date.

If this was, in fact, a date. He still didn’t really know, since neither he nor Mia had actually used that word to describe what was happening that night. Everyone else had just immediately assumed that was what it was, so Victor guessed they were probably right. But what if they weren’t? What if Mia just wanted to be friends and he went and did something embarrassing like trying to hold her hand or kiss her or something?

On the other hand, what if it _was_ a date? What would Mia be expecting him to do? It wasn’t like he was completely inexperienced. He’d kissed girls before, even made out once with April Levinson at a party last year, which was what led to their supremely awful date. It turned out that drunkenly making out at a party didn’t actually mean you had anything in common with or even liked a person, as he’d learned the hard way.

But a handful of kisses and one attempt at making out did not leave Victor feeling especially confident about his ability to impress Mia.

Felix didn’t help him feel any more confident when he arrived at Victor’s house, took one look at him, and said, “ _That’s_ what you’re wearing?”

“What?” he demanded, looking down at himself. He felt insulted on two levels. One, this was his favorite t-shirt. And two, he couldn’t believe _Felix_ of all people was judging his taste in clothes. The guy was currently wearing an orange shirt in a hue reminiscent of Cheetos with a picture of some kind of dinosaur or something on it, for god’s sake.

“No,” Victor said, shaking his head. “No, you of all people do not get to complain about my outfit.”

Felix looked offended. “What’s that supposed to mean, me of all people?”

Pilar paused on her way through the living room, apparently having overheard their conversation. She looked Victor and Felix up and down in a way that clearly expressed her absolute disdain for both of them.

“Have _either_ of you looked at yourselves recently? I’m pretty sure neither one of you is qualified to handle this situation.” She nodded at Victor. “Up. Let’s go see what we can do with you.”

Victor groaned, reluctantly trailing after her toward his bedroom. “Pilar, you’re wearing fishnets, a ripped skirt, and there are, like, a dozen loose threads hanging off your shirt.”

“They’re _distressed_ , Victor, that’s how they’re supposed to look. Anyway, relax, it’s not like you actually have any interesting clothes like these, so I couldn’t dress you like me even if I wanted to. I’ll just help you find your least boring, mainstream, boy-next-door shirt so you have a chance of impressing Mia.”

“What about this green one?” Felix suggested, pulling an olive green t-shirt out of Victor’s closet.

“Do you want him to look like a giant tamale? Put it away before I hurl. See, this is what I mean, you two can’t be trusted with this.” She started rummaging through his clothes, yanking things out, examining them with varying degrees of disgust before dropping them unceremoniously on the floor. She finally settled on a royal blue button up t-shirt that Victor usually wore to church on Sundays and a pair of black jeans that he was planning to get rid of because they were a little small on him now.

“These don’t really fit me anymore-” he began to protest, when Pilar gave him a look.

“I’m pretty sure those are the only ones you own that aren’t all baggy in the butt.”

Victor blushed. “You’re my sister! Why do you know what my butt looks like in any of my pants?”

Pilar smirked at him. “Well, the only reason I noticed was because every time you wear these black ones to church, Alice spends half the service checking out your ass.”

“Oh my god.”

Felix snickered. “Isn’t Alice that old lady? The one that always wears the flowery scarves?”

“That’s the one. I think she’s, like, forty? I don’t know. But if you need an experienced woman to teach you some things,” Pilar started to say, but Victor would die of mortification if she finished that sentence, so he shut her up by shoving his pillow at her face. This started a brief but violent altercation that nearly ended in Victor being suffocated in his own bedding, before he slumped onto his mattress in defeat. Pilar tossed the outfit she had organized at him, looking triumphant. “Go get changed, Romeo, or you’re gonna be late.”

He checked the time and swore. Felix had arrived early, like always, but now they’d have to leave in the next five minutes or he really would be late.

Twenty minutes after that he was stepping out of Felix’s car as his best friend gave him a thumbs up from from the window before driving away. He took a moment to stand in the driveway and stare up at the sprawling two story house before him. There were columns out front like something from a Greek temple, an immaculate lawn illuminated by warm light spilling out from huge windows, and a three car garage off to the right. It was the most intimidating front door he’d ever had to knock on.

When the massive door swung open, Mia stood there in a comfy looking pink shirt and shorts, with her hair in two buns, and she looked so petite and almost shy that he found himself instantly relaxing.

“Hi Victor, come on in.”

“Uh, should I take my shoes off?” he asked, trying not to stare too openly as he stepped into the huge foyer. At least, he thought the space they were standing in was called a foyer. Most of the houses he’d spent time in didn’t exactly have hallways with chandeliers in them.

Mia smiled. “Don’t worry about it. So, the kitchen’s this way, I’ve got everything set up already. Um, do you want anything to drink? I think there’s all the usual stuff, tea, coffee, water, juice...”

Victor had never seen such an enormous kitchen. The counters were made of white marble and all of the appliances were gleaming spotlessly underneath a huge, curving metal light fixture that hung over a large central island. He felt like he’d stepped into one of those shows on HGTV that his mom liked to watch.

“Tea is good,” he said, following Mia over to where she had everything all laid out for them. There were stacks of _nori_ , a bowl of white rice, a bottle of some kind of clear sauce, and all kinds of different fish and fillings for rolls spread out across the counter top. It seemed like a lot for just the two of them.

“I hope you like sweet tea.” Mia handed him a glass filled with ice and a lemon wedge. “Our housekeeper is kinda heavy-handed with the sugar.”

He took a polite sip and then fought the urge not to spit it right back out again. Mia caught his wince and laughed.

“I warned you,” she said. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to drink it. You want something else instead?”

“No, no, this is fine.” He looked over the ingredients. “So, what did you have in mind? Any particular rolls you wanna try?”

“Well… I know it’s not very traditional, but I really love the ones with lots of cream cheese or avocado. You know, the least healthy kind.”

“Who says you have to be healthy on a Friday night? Let’s go wild and eat all the cream cheese and avocado that we want.” He grabbed a piece of _nori_ and placed it on one of the bamboo mats on the counter, then started to scoop rice onto it. Once it was spread evenly across the surface, he laid out a variety of ingredients in long rows on top.

He had expected Mia to start working on her own roll using the mat beside him, but she seemed content to observe him as he went about carefully rolling and then cutting the pieces. When he’d finished, he offered one of them to her to test.

Mia picked it up expertly with a pair of chopsticks and dipped it lightly into a dish of soy sauce mixed with _wasabi_. Then she popped it into her mouth, eyes lighting up as she ate.

“Wow, Victor, I’m impressed. That’s really good for your first time making sushi.”

“Well, I might have practiced a little bit. Last night. In preparation for today.” He laughed self-consciously. “That’s pretty dorky, right? I just didn’t want to make a total fool out of myself in front of you.”

Mia bit her lip, as if to stop her smile from getting too big. Her brown eyes were bright as they looked up at him, and he wondered what she was seeing when she did.

“Well, I guess that makes you the sushi expert out of the two of us, doesn’t it? Please, teach me, Victor-sensei.” Mia put her hands together and did a silly little half bow that was charming in its awkwardness.

There was something about Mia that Victor couldn’t help feeling drawn to. She wasn’t really what he’d expected at all. She seemed so kind and funny, and it was so easy to be with her. Maybe this really could work.

They spent the next hour concocting their own rolls, Mia teasingly complaining that he was hogging all the avocado, and then she wouldn’t share the cream cheese out of retaliation, until he cheated by using his longer arms to wrestle it away. Unfortunately, Mia discovered his secret weakness (he was extremely ticklish) and used it ruthlessly to lay claim to all of the best ingredients, including the shrimp which was Victor’s favorite.

The longer they stood there messing around in the kitchen, the closer Mia seemed to get. Their arms kept brushing up against each other as they worked, and sometimes Mia would reach over him to grab something she needed, pressing into his side as she did. All of these little touches added up to something that felt like butterflies, a pleasant, buzzing nervousness in his stomach that he was beginning to like.

Eventually they loaded up all of the rolls and _nigiri_ they’d prepared onto a few large plates and took it out to the living room. The space was once again flawlessly decorated and huge, at least three times as big as the living room at Victor’s house. The expensive looking sofas that filled up the center of the room were spotlessly white, so white in fact Victor was scared to sit on them. He couldn’t help double checking that his clothes were in fact clean and not covered in dust or horse manure or some other contaminant from home.

He took a seat next to Mia, and as soon as he did she scooted a little closer, her shoulder bumping his arm as she reached for a piece of sushi with her chopsticks. He picked some up as well, and she smiled as she tapped the two rolls together.

“Cheers,” Mia said. “Here’s to a night of making our own sushi dreams come true.”

As they ate and chatted, Victor couldn’t help thinking in the back of his mind about how this definitely seemed to be a date, and surprisingly, it seemed to be going well. He was really doing this. He was on a date with one of the most beautiful girls he’d ever seen, and she seemed to like him, too, and he was sure that he felt _something_ when she touched him. Something soft and warm, something gentle like Mia was gentle, that he wanted to hold onto, cradled carefully in the palms of his hands.

But after they finished eating, an uncomfortable anticipation seemed to creep up on him, and where the conversation had been so easy before, it now contained awkward moments of silence. Victor couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was doing something wrong in those moments. Like, he should have known how to fill them, but he didn’t, and Mia just watched him expectantly while he floundered.

Her eyes kept flickering down, and it took him too long to realize she was looking at his mouth. _I should kiss her_ , Victor thought, and he wanted to, but there was something inside him that was holding him back. It felt like his mask was slipping, and if he touched Mia now he’d reveal what hid underneath. What if he tried to kiss her, and he didn’t feel anything? How would he be able to carry on with the charade if his worst fears turned out to be true? Kissing Mia would be different than those other kisses he’d shared with girls in the past. It’d be different because it felt like there might be a chance for something with Mia, and he’d never felt that before. Not with a girl. Kissing Mia would be pivotal, life-changing; it might hold the answer to the confusion inside of him, but suddenly Victor realized that he just wasn’t ready to know yet.

“Hey, um, sorry but I should probably get going soon. My parents are really strict about me not staying out too late.” Victor couldn’t bring himself to look at Mia too closely as he made his excuses, but her disappointment was palpable. She moved back a little on the couch, and the extra inch of space felt like an uncrossable chasm between them.

“Oh. That’s okay. Thank you for coming over, it was a lovely evening.” The sudden too-formal tone of Mia’s voice was the clearest indicator that she was hurt, so different from the confident, teasing girl he’d spent the last few hours with. Victor’s self-loathing tasted bitter in his throat.

They said their goodbyes, Mia politely declining his offer to help clean up. Under normal circumstances, Victor would have insisted, but he could tell that Mia wanted him to leave, and he couldn’t really stand to be there anymore, with the weight of Mia’s disappointment in him hanging heavy over his head. As he walked down the street away from her house, he wondered how he’d taken something that felt like a real chance at having a normal life and managed to fuck it up so badly.

He didn’t bother to call his parents or Felix for a ride. The long walk home in the darkness was a penance, like being given five Hail Mary’s and two Our Father’s from the priest after confession. He’d left his headphones at home so he couldn’t even listen to music as he walked. It was so lonely out there, alone in the dark. It was a feeling Victor was getting far too familiar with.

A crackling noise woke Victor up on Saturday morning and it took him a disoriented minute or so to figure out that it was coming from the walkie-talkie on his nightstand.

“Victor, come in. I know you’re awake, you early bird, you. Over.”

Victor groaned, scrubbing a hand over his face, and checked the time on the digital clock by his bed. Eight sixteen in the morning. Sometimes he really hated Felix.

“What do you want.” Victor mumbled into the walkie-talkie. “Over.”

“Whoah, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed today. You okay? Over.”

“Fine, just didn’t sleep well last night.” That was an understatement. Victor had lain awake in bed for hours, staring up at the ceiling, trying to make the nagging thoughts in his head shut up. He had no idea what time he’d finally fallen asleep, but it had been late. “Over.”

“Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you, but I’ve been dying to know. How’d things go with Mia last night? Over.”

Victor sat up in bed, staring down at the familiar plastic device in his hand, and honestly didn’t know what to say. “Can we talk later? I think I might actually die if I don’t go get a cup of coffee in the next five minutes. Over.”

“Oh, sure, no worries. Is it cool if I come over in a bit? Over.”

“Yeah, of course.” Victor remembered how Felix had looked the other day when Victor had asked about his mom, and added, “Come for breakfast. I think I can smell bacon out there. Over.”

It was impossible to miss the gratitude in Felix’s voice when he replied, “Awesome! See you soon, buddy.”

Victor took his time showering and getting dressed before he wandered out to the kitchen, so Felix was already there sitting in between Pilar and Adrian by the time Victor took a seat. The hot shower had definitely helped wake him up, but now he was faced with expectant looks from everyone at the table, including his little brother, even though Adrian was probably only staring at him because everyone else was.

“Well?” Isabel demanded, leaning forward excitedly.

“Well what?” Victor said, trying to play dumb.

His mother narrowed her eyes. “How was your date with Mia last night? C’mon, we want to hear all the details.”

“Speak for yourself,” Pilar grumbled, but she hadn’t touched her phone since he’d arrived at the table and there was clearly a glint of curiosity in her gaze.

Victor swallowed a large gulp of coffee to give himself strength. “It went… fine.”

“Just ‘fine’?” Felix asked, looking concerned.

“Yeah, I mean, we had a good time. We made sushi. As far as I know, neither of us got food poisoning, which is great, and it was nice.”

“Okay, but was it _romantic_?” Isabel asked.

“Was there any kissing?” Felix chimed in, waggling his eyebrows.

“Oh my god,” Victor moaned. “Why are you guys grilling me about this? Didn’t Pilar go out on a date last night, too? How come you’re not asking her a million personal questions?”

Pilar shot him a dirty look for trying to drag her into things.

“Who’s Mia?” Adrian asked. “Is she your girlfriend, Victor?”

“No!” he exclaimed, a little too loudly, and everyone gave him odd looks. He blushed. “I mean, no, she’s just a friend that I hung out with once, and I’m not even really sure it counted as a date. That’s it. So can we all stop making such a big deal out of this?”

“We’re just happy for you, _mijo_ ,” Armando said. “That’s all we want, okay? For you to be happy.”

The topic of conversation transitioned then to school and how much homework they were getting already, and Victor sunk down into his chair, sipping his coffee and pushing the remaining food around his plate without really eating any. He was grateful that the spotlight had moved away from him so he could relax a little, but his father’s words just kept echoing through his head.

Would he still say that all he wanted was for Victor to be happy if he knew what Victor was secretly dreaming about, the kind of person he really wanted, deep down? Victor doubted it. It hurt to think that his parents’ love for him might be conditional. It hurt so much it translated into a physical pain, an ache in his chest that just wouldn’t go away no matter how far down he tried to bury it.

No one took much notice when he excused himself quietly to go to the bathroom. As soon as the door closed behind him, he sank back against it, sliding all the way down to the floor, eyes squeezing shut while he tried to keep his breathing under control. He wasn’t sure how long he was in there before the light-headed, floating sensation began to fade and he could feel things again. The cool tiles underneath him. The hard wood against his back. The sounds of his family talking and eating out in the kitchen. Victor stood and went to the sink, splashing cold water against his face. He dried his skin, forced his body to relax, and went out to help his dad clean up.

After breakfast, Felix went outside with him to feed and water the horses. Beau was waiting at his usual spot, while Elsa, who was much younger, was trotting off some excess energy around the pasture. She hurried over when she saw them, nosing at Felix in her impatience to get at the bucket in his hands. It was a hot day, already headed toward the triple digits even though it was barely past nine in the morning. They climbed up onto the wooden split rail fence under the shade of the oak tree and watched the horses eat. A comfortable silence fell over them for awhile, the kind that only existed when he was with his best friend.

Part of him wanted to tell Felix everything. He knew that Felix wouldn’t care, that Felix would almost certainly accept him no matter what. He’d always known that he could trust Felix with anything. He sucked in a deep breath, the truth hovering right there on his tongue... and then let it out in a sigh. He couldn’t do it.

Victor hung his head. _I’m such a coward._

“So I’m gonna take a leap here and guess that things didn’t actually go that well last night,” Felix said, after awhile. “Just judging by your long face this morning. Wanna talk about it?”

“Not really.”

“Okay.” Felix jumped down from the fence. “Well, I’m here for you, man, anytime you wanna talk. But could we maybe take the brooding indoors? If I don’t get into some air conditioning soon I’m gonna have to be cleaned up with a mop.”

“Yeah, okay.” Victor hopped down, too, and took a moment to stroke his hand over Beau’s mane. “Hey Felix?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. You know, for always being such a good friend.”

Felix grinned. “Of course! You do the same for me.”

Victor knew he wasn’t ready to admit the truth yet, to Felix or to himself, but it helped knowing that if he ever was ready someday, Felix would be there for him.

Later that day, when Victor was sitting at the desk in his room working on his homework, a new message popped up on his phone from Simon.

_Victor,_

_Don’t worry about the angst, it’s pretty much a rite of passage on your way to becoming an adult, and trust me, we’ve all been there. You should see some of the lyrics I tried to write when I was fourteen and going through my artistic phase. On second thought, actually, nobody should ever see those lyrics…_

_It’s kinda hard to answer your question. Figuring out who I was took time, and honesty, and a lot of courage. Sexuality is pretty confusing, it turns out, and it can be hard to figure out what you like. The important thing is that as long as you’re not hurting yourself or anyone else, sex can be a really fun, positive thing and it’s okay to like whatever you like. Don’t ever let anyone else make you feel ashamed of it._

_As far as girls go… Well, I did have some crushes on girls when I was in middle school, or at least, I thought I did. In retrospect I’m pretty sure I was just feeling friendship or admiration, or in one unfortunate case just trying to like the same girl all the other guys liked because it seemed like the thing to do. We went to the seventh grade winter dance together and I literally ran away from her when she tried to kiss me on the dance floor so I could go hide in a bathroom._ _Not_ _my finest moment._

_If you feel something for Mia, that’s great. I hope you guys had a good time on your date. But don’t forget, you can’t be so focused on everyone else’s happiness that you forget about your own. You deserve to be happy, too, Victor._

_Simon_


	4. Stoplight Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: internalized homophobia, brief discussion of alcoholism

Despite the fact that Victor had been dreading seeing Mia again in Chemistry, everything ended up being fine. The first few minutes were a little awkward, and then Mia made a joke that was unexpectedly corny, so Victor told her she sounded like his dad, and from that point on it was just the same easy banter that Victor had enjoyed so much during the first part of their date. They worked well together on their project, both of them good students, and the fact that he felt confident in earning a good grade helped him relax and enjoy his time with Mia.

As they were getting ready to leave at the end of the period, Mia glanced over at him quickly and said, “Um, this is kinda stupid, but I guess I’m hosting a party on Saturday. It’s, like, one of those stoplight parties. Lake’s idea, not mine, but, um, if you’re free you should come.” She shrugged, overly casual. “If you want to.”

He had no idea what a stoplight party was, but he couldn’t believe that he might be getting his second chance with Mia after all. “Yeah, sure! That sounds really cool. I’ll be there.”

“Oh, that’s great.” Mia’s hair was hanging loose around her face today, and she smiled as she pushed a few curls back behind her ear. “Well, I’ll see you there then. Bye, Victor.”

Victor couldn’t bring himself to ask in front of all of his friends at lunch, so he waited until it was just him and Felix in the hallway on their way to English. “Hey, have you ever heard of a stoplight party?”

Felix stopped walking, grabbing Victor by the shoulder. “Wait, there’s going to be a stoplight party? When? Where? This is exactly the kind of moment I’ve been waiting for!”

“Uh, yeah, there’s gonna be one at Mia’s house on Saturday. She invited me this morning and I said I’d go… but I have no idea what it is.”

“Holy crap, Victor! Why didn’t you say anything earlier? This is so exciting! It sounds like things didn’t go that badly on your date with Mia after all. Which you still need to tell me about by the way. Don’t think I’m letting you off the hook just ‘cause you didn’t feel like talking the other day.”

Victor rolled his eyes. “Could you just tell me what it is already?”

“Okay, so it’s a party where everybody dresses in colors signifying their relationship status. Like, green for single, yellow for interested, and red for taken.” Felix grinned. “Which means, this is the perfect opportunity for us to show the special ladies in our lives that we’re interested!”

“Ugh, you did not just say ‘special ladies’. What are you, my Abuelo Tito?”

“Seriously, Victor, this could be my chance to finally get Lake to notice me and for you to show Mia how you feel.” He gave Victor some serious puppy dog eyes. “You will take me to the party with you, right buddy? Please?”

“Yeah, of course you can come with me. Just please don’t do anything super embarrassing in front of Mia.”

“I make no promises.”

Saturday arrived quicker than Victor was expecting, thanks to how busy he’d been all week. There was basketball practice after school almost everyday, followed by evenings at Brasstown, and then homework, and by the time he went to bed each night he was exhausted. It was hard to find time to think much about the party until it was Saturday morning and then he was hit with a sudden wave of anxiety. He had to try to fix things with Mia. He’d been given a second chance and now he had to make the most of it.

He had an opening shift at Brasstown, and since he was full of nervous energy that morning, he ended up arriving about ten minutes early. The doors were still locked, so he hung around out front until Benji arrived and let them both inside.

“You just couldn’t wait to get started on your six hours of easy listening?” Benji said as they headed into the locker room. Despite the teasing tone, there was something heavy lingering in Benji’s voice, and he didn’t look as put together as he always did. His hair was hanging loose around his face, the longer strands tucked behind his ears, lacking its usual impeccable styling. It was hard to tell in the dim light of the back room, but it seemed like there were shadows under his eyes as well.

“You know me, can’t get enough of the emo girls with acoustic guitars,” Victor quipped. He pulled on his apron and followed Benji out into the shop. “Are you okay? You look kinda tired today.”

Benji nodded, but didn’t look up at Victor. “Yeah, fine. Just had a rough week.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Is everything okay?”

Benji sighed. “Not really, but I don’t think I feel like talking about it right now. I kinda just need a distraction from my own drama today.”

“Well, did you hear about the thing at Mia’s house tonight?” Victor had no idea why he was saying this. Benji showing up to Mia’s party would only make it harder for him to focus on getting ahead with Mia.

 _Benji has a boyfriend_ , Victor reminded himself. Tonight could still be about him and Mia. It would be fine.

“You mean the stoplight party? Yeah, she invited me, too. I’m not sure if I’m gonna go, though. Parties aren’t really my thing.”

They were on opposite sides of the room, Victor overturning chairs and placing them at tables while Benji started up the cash register and got the coffee brewing. On the other occasions that they’d opened together, Benji liked to put on a playlist while they worked, but today he just moved around in silence. There was something so despondent about him that morning that Victor hated seeing, and he found himself talking before his brain could catch up with what he was saying.

“You should come. I mean, it’d be a good distraction, and it’d be fun to hang out with you outside of just work and school.”

Benji looked over at him in surprise. “Really?”

Their gaze was holding and it had its usual effect on Victor, his heart speeding up and a familiar heat blooming across his cheeks. He couldn’t look away.

“Yeah, seriously. We could go together, if you want.” Then, embarrassed by the way that sounded, he hurried to add, “You and me and Felix, I mean. I don’t have my license yet, so Felix was gonna give me a ride tonight...”

The corners of Benji’s mouth turned up, just a little at first, but it made something inside of Victor feel like he was soaring.

“Okay. Yeah, uh, that would be fun.”

Victor prayed that his brown complexion was dark enough to hide the blush that was burning up his face. He turned back to moving the chairs around, just in case. “Cool. We can pick you up around eight, if that’s okay? Just text me your address.”

The morning shift was always the busiest one, but Victor was grateful for it that day. He and Benji fell into their usual rhythm, moving smoothly around each other in the small space behind the counter, Benji handing him whatever he needed before he even had to finish a request, and the steady flow of orders kept Victor’s mind off of all the things it wanted to worry about.

And whenever there was a moment of anxiety, Victor reminded himself: _Benji has a boyfriend. Tonight is about me and Mia._

That evening Felix came over to eat dinner with the Salazars and afterward they ended up in Victor’s room surveying his collection of shirts. Felix was already wearing a polo shirt the exact shade of yellow as the mustard in the school cafeteria and a pair of long yellow board shorts. He’d clearly attempted to style his hair more than usual, but it still flopped around all over the place like it always tended to do. To Victor’s horror, he then completed this ensemble with a bright yellow headband.

“What?” Felix demanded, in response to the way Victor was looking at him aghast. “I wanna make sure Lake knows I’m interested.”

“Well, fear not, ‘cause there is no way she’ll be able to miss all of _that_.” Victor reached for a t-shirt he thought would work for himself, which was significantly more subdued than Felix’s, and pulled it on.

“No, no, that one’s more of a cream,” Felix complained, and Victor groaned and yanked it off. “Look, I’m guessing that last weekend didn’t go the way you wanted it to because you got too shy to make a move on Mia.”

Victor gaped at him. “How did you-”

“I’ve only been your best friend since we were both playing with Hot Wheels, Victor, I’d like to think I know you pretty well.” He dug around in the back of Victor’s closet and emerged holding a bright yellow tank top with a faded image of the Alamo printed on it. His grandparents had given it to him after their trip to San Antonio last year. “Here, put this on, it’s perfect. You have to send her a clear signal this time, buddy, and it probably won’t hurt to show off those basketball arms while you’re at it.”

Victor tried to banish the fact that Felix had noticed his arms from his brain. They were practically brothers. Even though he objectively knew that his best friend was pretty good looking if you saw past his bad taste in clothes, he’d never had any of _those_ kinds of thoughts about him.

Standing around shirtless wasn’t helping him feel any less awkward, so he pulled on the tank top and hoped it didn’t look too stupid. He was already wearing a pair of gray jeans that were still fairly new and he grabbed his favorite pair of Nikes for good luck. If they just happened to be the same ones Benji had complimented on the first day of school, well, he tried not to think about that too much.

Benji’s house turned out to be a blue one-story in an old neighborhood near the college. It wasn’t as big and fancy as some of the other houses in town, but there was a flowering tree curving over the front porch where a swinging loveseat hung, and there was something immediately welcoming about it. Benji stepped out quickly when Felix’s car pulled into the driveway, wearing jeans with a gray button up shirt on top, the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. Victor had been expecting to see him in red and was a little surprised by the choice of a neutral color.

The drive over to Mia’s house only took about ten minutes. They mostly talked about school and the music that Felix had playing in the car. Victor tried to remind himself to relax, but something about having Benji around when he was with Felix had him on edge. Felix could read him so well; better than anyone else, really. What if he noticed something in the way Victor talked to Benji? The way Victor looked at him? He tried to keep his gaze focused out the passenger window as much as possible as they drove, wondering why he’d ever thought this would be a good idea.

It was a little after eight when they arrived at the party and Mia’s house was already filling up; at least, as much as a house that size could fill up. Mia greeted them at the door in a light yellow dress, her face brightening as she took in the color of Victor’s shirt. The three of them followed her into the kitchen to get drinks, and Felix looked immediately crushed to see Lake standing near the fridge in a tight red dress.

“So there’s beer in the fridge, stuff for mixing drinks over there, and Lake made some kind of punch. It’s in that big blue bowl on the table. Word to the wise: if you go for the punch, drink _very_ slowly.”

Victor laughed, and then stood there awkwardly not knowing what to choose. He hadn’t been to a lot of parties, and only a few of the ones he went to last year had had alcohol. Felix looked equally at a loss.

“Uh, just a beer, I guess?” Victor asked, and Felix nodded.

“Is Shiner, okay? I think there might be some Corona in there, too, but it’s not that cold yet.” Mia handed them a couple of bottles and looked expectantly at Benji. There was something uncomfortable in the set of his face.

“I can just get something for myself, thanks,” he said.

“Oh sure, help yourself. There’s plenty of snacks, too.”

“Hey there, hot stuff!” Lake said as she came over, looking Benji up and down. “What’s with the gray shirt? Didn’t Mia tell you what the theme was?”

“She did. I just wasn’t sure I felt like advertising my relationship status to everyone tonight,” Benji answered.

That was strange, Victor thought, considering that one of the first things Benji had told them all about himself when they met was that he had a boyfriend.

Mia’s expression turned sympathetic, and Lake’s outraged. Lake crossed her arms over her chest. “Are those assholes at school still hassling you?”

_Oh. Oh shit._

Benji just shook his head dismissively. “It’s fine, Lake. I appreciate it, really, but I’ve been out for over a year now. I know how to deal with homophobes.”

Lake stared him down stubbornly. “Just because you _can_ deal with them on your own, doesn’t mean you should _have_ _to_. If you need us, we’ve got your back.”

Mia nodded. “Anytime.”

“Same here,” Felix spoke up, and Victor gave Benji a hesitant nod of his own.

For the first time since they’d arrived at the party, Benji seemed to relax, his shoulders lowering and a small but genuine smile tilting one side of his mouth upward. “Thanks, guys.”

There was a knock on the door and the girls went to let the newcomers in. Victor watched out of the corner of his eye as Benji walked away to pour himself a drink, only half-listening to Felix’s wild speculations about why Lake was wearing red. There were stacks of Solo cups on the counter, interspersed with bottles of spirits and various sodas and juices. Benji was filling one of them with Coke, but his hand seemed to shake as he did, and the brown liquid spilled all down the front of his shirt.

Benji swore, and Victor found himself grabbing a roll of paper towels and moving forward to help before he was aware of what he was doing. He reached out, pressing the towel against Benji’s abdomen, and felt his breath catch at the firmness of the muscle under his hand. He flushed, eyes accidentally catching Benji’s, and took a rushed step back. The moment in the cafe when Benji had tried to clean the foam off of Victor’s shirt flashed through his mind and Victor felt that same urge to run away again, as fast as he could from the gravitational pull that Benji seemed to exert over him.

“Sorry, uh, here,” Victor stammered, thrusting the paper towels at Benji, who was staring back at him like Victor had lost his mind. He probably wasn’t wrong about that.

“Thanks.” Benji pressed the towel to his shirt a couple of times, and then sighed. “It’s fine. I have another shirt on underneath anyway.”

Benji’s long fingers began undoing his buttons, and Victor froze, heart stopping for a moment, as the t-shirt underneath was revealed. The very much dark _green_ shirt.

Catching the way Victor was staring at his clothes in shock, Benji huffed out a breath in what seemed to be annoyance. “Well, now you all will know why I didn’t feel like advertising anything tonight. I don’t even know why I’m wearing this, it’s not like I really wanted everyone to know about it… but too late now I guess.”

“Benji, what...” Victor started to say, and trailed off, not really knowing what he wanted to ask. His brain wasn’t exactly functioning at its highest capacity in that moment.

“Derek broke up with me last night. That’s what I meant by needing a distraction from my own drama today,” Benji admitted.

“Oh.” Victor’s heart was pounding so hard, a thundering rhythm that shook him to his core. He had no idea how to deal with this, but he had to say something. “I’m so sorry, Benji. That really sucks.”

Benji turned away from him, shoulders shrugging, and began to rinse out his stained shirt. “I should’ve seen it coming, honestly. The long distance thing just wasn’t going to work for us. I think I’ve known that ever since I moved here, but I just didn’t want to accept it.”

“Still, that’s really shitty.”

“It is what it is. _Anyway_ , I see you’re in yellow tonight. Who’s the lucky person?” Benji bit his lip, once again turning slightly away from Victor as he refilled his half-empty cup. Victor couldn’t help noticing that he hadn’t mixed anything into it. His own beer was sitting on the counter, sweating onto the white marble. He picked it up and took a sip, trying and failing to hide his wince at the taste.

Benji laughed. “Not much of a drinker, are you?”

He shook his head. “No, I, uh, don’t go to parties that much.”

For some reason this admission made Benji smile.

“Well?” Benji nodded at his shirt.

Victor blushed. It occurred to him then that his constant refrain of “ _Benji has a boyfriend. Tonight is about me and Mia.”_ was no longer entirely accurate. Benji didn’t have a boyfriend anymore, the tight green shirt he was wearing made that extremely clear. And although he and Mia had both worn yellow, he hadn’t talked to her much since he’d arrived, hadn’t even thought to look around for her in the last ten minutes that he’d been so distracted by Benji. He’d missed Felix wandering off as well, and spotted him just then near the punch bowl, staring forlornly at Lake in her red dress, who was standing close to Andrew, one hand on his arm.

 _It’s for you,_ Victor wanted to say. It felt like his whole body was being tugged onto a collision course with Benji’s and he had no idea how to stop the fall. All he knew just then was that every part of him wanted this boy, this boy with his perfect hair and beautiful face and gorgeous body, his warm and patient and incredible personality, standing there so close that Victor could easily move his arm just a little and touch him.

“Hey, Victor.” Mia’s voice, her hand on his shoulder, intruded on the moment so suddenly that Victor jumped, sloshing beer all over the floor and just narrowly missing his favorite sneakers.

“Whoah, sorry,” she said, backing up. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I was just going to ask if you wanted to come play a game with us,” she nodded toward Lake and Andrew. “They want to play beer pong, which is super cliché, I know, but it might be fun.”

Benji had bent down to wipe up the beer Victor spilled, and having Benji on his knees right in front of him while Mia stared at him was giving Victor heart palpitations. He squeaked out, “Sure,” just because he was panicking and would’ve agreed to practically anything at that moment if it meant he’d be able to escape the current situation.

“Cool,” Mia said. She bit her lip, looking uncertain for a second, then reached out to take his hand. Not knowing how to react to that, Victor just stood there dumbly and let their fingers intertwine. When Benji straightened up, he took in their joined hands with surprise.

“Do you want to join us?” Mia asked him. “We could make teams of three.”

“Um, thanks, but I think I’ll pass. I’m not really into drinking games.” He nodded at Victor. “You’re probably better off sticking with the basketball star.”

“Okay, catch you later then.” Mia gave Victor’s hand a little tug and directed him through a set of open french doors to the backyard. He chanced a quick glace over his shoulder at Benji, but he had already wandered off to talk with someone else.

Mia’s hand in his was warm and soft. It felt safe. He couldn’t believe how close he’d come just then to reaching out to Benji instead, who never felt safe at all. Every time his skin had come in contact with Benji’s in the weeks since they’d met, it had been electric, a charge so strong it left him breathless. He had the bizarre feeling that he’d just dodged a bullet that he’d secretly wanted to be struck by.

He and Mia played as a team against Lake and Andrew, and from the moment they all took their places at the table, there was a weird tension in the air. Lake was taking every opportunity to flirt with Andrew, accidentally bumping him, touching his arm, leaning in close when he was taking a shot. But Andrew wasn’t really responding to her. Each time he’d take a step back, keeping a few inches between them, and there was something unapologetic in his face when he threw the ball too hard in Victor’s direction, causing one of the cups to overturn and splash the hem of his tank top.

“Oops,” Andrew said, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

Victor had no idea what Andrew’s problem was, but he didn’t want to get into a fight with his teammate. “Whatever. It’s fine.”

“Do you want to go rinse it out?” Mia asked him. She touched the edge of his shirt, near his hip, smiling up at him. “At least the beer doesn’t stand out much against yellow.”

He opened his mouth, about to tell Mia not to worry about it, when Andrew interrupted.

“It’s your turn, Salazar, hurry up and go so I can get back to kicking your ass.”

Victor’s temper flared and he couldn’t help shooting a glare in Andrew’s direction. He grabbed the ping pong ball and tossed it with ease into one of the cups closest to Andrew. If some of the beer splashed him, well, Victor couldn’t be blamed for how close Andrew was standing to the table.

Andrew’s eyes met his defiantly as he picked up the cup and downed it.

“My turn!” Lake announced, giggling a little drunkenly, and pressed up against Andrew as she reached for the ball. She lost her balance and Andrew had to catch her, just barely stopping her from crashing into the table and overturning the whole thing.

“Whoopsie daisie,” Lake exclaimed, grinning up at Andrew and making no move to extricate herself from his arms.

Andrew pushed her away, not entirely gently. “Jesus christ, Lake, keep it in your fucking pants.”

Lake turned bright red, her eyes tearing up, and stormed away from the table and back inside the house. She moved very quickly for someone who’d seemed too tipsy to stand upright a minute ago.

“What the hell, Andrew?” Mia shouted. “Why do you always have to be such an asshole?”

“What? Am I just supposed to ignore her groping me all night?” Andrew demanded.

For someone so small, Mia was kind of terrifying when she was pissed. Even Andrew seemed to deflate a little under the glare Mia shot at him. “If you’re not interested, you just have to tell her that. Politely. Not lead her on all night and then dump her as soon as you get bored.”

“Well, you’d know something about that, wouldn’t you?” Andrew snapped and Mia went pale.

Victor was starting to feel like a very uncomfortable third wheel in this conversation, and wished he were literally anywhere else. He looked around, wondering where Felix was and if there was any way his best friend could come and save him from this, but Felix was nowhere to be seen.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Mia asked, staring wide-eyed at Andrew. Victor thought there might be a tremor of fear in her voice.

Andrew just shook his head and started walking away. “Nothing,” he called back, over his shoulder.

Mia’s eyes were shining with tears, but she didn’t let them fall. Which was fortunate, because Victor honestly had no idea what he would do if she did start crying. Pilar was not the type to allow anyone to witness her vulnerable moments, so the last time Victor had seen her cry had been that time she broke her wrist at gymnastics when she was eight. Having Pilar for a sister didn’t really help much when it came to understanding how to act around girls.

“I’m sorry, Victor. I, uh, I think I should go find Lake.”

“Yeah, of course. Uh, are you sure you’re okay?”

Mia leaned forward suddenly to wrap her arms around his neck. Not sure what else to do, Victor hesitantly wrapped his own around her waist. She felt so warm, pressed up against his chest. It was nice.

They stood like that for just a moment before Mia stepped back, composing herself. She looked more grounded than before.

“I am now,” she answered. “I’ll come find you later, okay?”

He nodded, and then watched as she walked back into the house. Out in the backyard there were a couple dozen other people, standing around in various groups, and even more people playing in the long, brightly lit pool. Victor recognized Matt and some other guys from the basketball team nearby, and went to talk with them for awhile. Matt kept handing him a new bottle of beer or Solo cup whenever Victor ran out, and pretty soon he had lost track of how many he’d had. The world was getting pleasantly hazy, the bright lights blurring in and out of focus.

Eventually he got bored of whatever Matt and the other guys were talking about (mostly girls they were interested in and who was wearing what color that evening) and wandered away. He thought it might be a good time to find Felix and check in with him. He hadn’t seen him at all since they’d arrived at the party. He couldn’t help wondering where Benji was, too; he’d seen him briefly when they were playing beer pong, talking with some people that Victor didn’t really know. He remembered catching Benji’s eye for just a moment, across the garden, and how Victor had ended up missing his next shot. Fortunately no one seemed to notice what had distracted him enough to throw him off his game.

He walked through the backyard and first floor of the house and couldn’t find Felix anywhere. He took out his phone and sent off a quick text.

_Where are u? did u leave already??_

Not sure what else to do with himself, Victor drank a couple of glasses of water to get his head to stop feeling like it was about to float off his shoulders, and then went back outside. The throbbing bass of the music and all the people shouting were starting to feel a little overwhelming, so Victor followed a dirt path toward a quieter corner of the yard where he could see a small wooden gazebo half-hidden beneath a tall weeping willow tree.

It appeared empty, but as Victor stepped into it the wood creaked under his foot, and he heard the sound of someone moving in the shadows. His eyes slowly adjusted to the dim light and he could make out someone sitting on a bench in front of him.

“Hey, Victor,” Benji said. His voice sounded strange, deeper than usual. His words were a little slurred when he spoke next. “How’d you find me back here?”

“Uh, I was just trying to get a break from the party,” Victor said. He could see a bottle in Benji’s hands, about half-full of amber liquid. Victor only hesitated for a second before he took a seat beside him. “Are you all right?”

Benji snorted, an ugly sound, and slumped back against the wall of the gazebo. “Nope. Definitely not. I fucked up pretty bad, Victor.”

Victor couldn’t help leaning toward him, trying to see him better in the darkness. “What do you mean? What’s wrong?”

“Not s’posed to be drinking. My parents are gonna fuckin’ kill me when they find out.”

“Oh. Well, maybe Mia would let you crash here tonight? Then they wouldn’t have to know about it.”

“Can’t do that. I promised them that if I ever screwed up again, I’d tell them. It was part of our agreement.” Benji looked down at the bottle in his hands, his face twisting in anger, and suddenly threw it as hard as he could into the bushes. He slumped down again, head in his hands.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Victor said, placing a careful hand on Benji’s shoulder. There it was again, that surge of electrical current that shot through him where they touched. Victor breathed deep, tried so hard to ignore it. “Look, everybody’s been drinking a lot tonight, it’s not just you, okay? I probably drank more than I should’ve, too.”

Benji shook his head, face still pressed into his palms. “It’s not the same,” he protested, voice muffled, but Victor could still hear the anguish in it. “I’m not like everybody else. I have a problem. I’m not s’posed to drink ‘cause…. Because I can’t control myself when I do. I drink way too much in order to escape my problems and then I do something insane and dangerous. Like drive my dad’s car through a goddamn Wendy’s.”

“Oh.” Victor didn’t even know what to say to that.

Benji’s shoulders shook under Victor’s hand, and Victor realized he was crying. “I’m only seventeen and I’m already such a fuck up. I’m an alcoholic. I wrecked my dad’s car a year ago and got my parents saddled with a load of debt as a result, and I was so close to making it to one year sober and now I’ve ruined that, too. Of course Derek would leave me. Who wouldn’t?”

“Hey, no,” Victor said firmly. He grabbed Benji’s shoulders and pulled him up, made Benji look at him when he said, “You’re not a fuck up, Benji. I haven’t known you very long, but I already know that you’re one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. You’re so patient with me at work, always making time to teach me something until I have it just right, and you’re brave enough to be yourself, even here in Brandon where you hardly know anyone. I wish I could be as brave as you are. You’re good at dancing, you’re funny, and you’re a great barista, even if your latte art is kinda terrible.”

Benji let out a watery laugh. “How dare you insult my latte art.”

He seemed so fragile, this boy who was always so confident, and it made Victor feel like his heart was breaking just looking at him. Victor’s hand slid from Benji’s shoulders to wrap tightly around his waist, drawing Benji closer to him. Benji fell so easily into his arms, resting his head on Victor’s shoulder. He didn’t seem to be crying any longer; just breathing, each breath a little steadier than the last.

Nothing had ever felt so right to Victor. He was terrified of just how good it felt to hold Benji close to him, of how hard he knew it would be to let him go.

Eventually Benji pulled away and ran a shaky hand over his face. He let out a long sigh, staring off into the shadows.

“Thank you. For saying all of that, and just for being here.” His eyes flicked over to Victor’s yellow tank top, lingering on it. “Mia’s a really lucky girl.”

Hearing Mia’s name felt like getting a bucket of ice water dumped on his head. Tonight was supposed to be about him and Mia and he’d just allowed himself to get completely wrapped up in Benji yet again. He was such an idiot.

Victor scooted back, putting a safe distance between them so that he could try to clear his head. It was so hard to think with Benji there, beautiful even when he was falling apart.

“I think I better go home,” Benji said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. This isn’t a problem that will go away if I just try to hide it. I already learned that lesson the hard way.”

Victor nodded. “All right. I’ll just go look for Felix and see if he’s sober enough to give us a ride home. Just wait here for me, okay?”

It ended up taking nearly ten minutes to find Felix, and when he did find him it was pretty clear Felix would not be giving them a ride anywhere. His friend was passed out in what Victor assumed must be Mia’s bathroom, with some pretty disgusting graffiti scrawled across his face in black ink. Victor was trying to shake him awake when Mia walked in.

“Oh, Victor, there you are. I was looking all over for you.”

“Sorry, I, uh, just needed a break from the party for a bit. Is everything okay?”

Mia looked pointedly at Felix. “He’s kind of a mess. He was in here throwing up for like twenty minutes, and now I can’t get him to wake up.”

Victor cringed. “I am so sorry, Mia.”

“Do you have a way to get him home?”

He shook his head. “Not really. He was the one that drove us here and I don’t have my license yet.”

“Okay.” She bit her lip, thinking it over. “Look, you guys can just crash here and drive home in the morning. My dad’s out of town right now so it should be fine.”

He was going to be in so much trouble with his parents if he didn’t come home that night, but after a decade of friendship Victor probably owed it to Felix to make sure he didn’t die in his sleep or anything.

“Thanks, Mia. You’re amazing. Um, I hate to ask, but could I just leave him here for a little bit while I walk another friend home? He had too much to drink and I don’t think it’s a good idea to let him go alone.”

“Of course,” Mia answered. She lingered in the doorway, watching as he rolled up a bath towel and placed it under Felix’s head. “You seem like a really good friend, Victor.”

He shrugged. “It’s nothing. I’ll be back in about thirty or forty minutes, I think? Sorry again to leave you like this.”

She pushed him toward the door. “Go, it’s fine. I’ll see you in a little bit.”

Benji was very quiet on the walk home, clearly lost in his own thoughts. Victor didn’t say much, either. He reached out to steady Benji whenever he looked like he might trip, but it seemed like Benji had sobered up a lot in the last half an hour.

When they finally reached their destination, the house was dark except for one light in the living room. Victor guessed that Benji’s parents were probably waiting up for him. It was nearing midnight now, and Victor knew that his own parents would be expecting him home soon, too. He’d have to text them and tell them he was breaking curfew.

“Thanks, Victor. You were really great tonight.”

“No worries. I hope you feel better tomorrow.” Victor had a sudden urge to hold Benji one more time, to make sure he would really be okay. He shoved the feeling away hard, and was left standing there awkwardly, letting Benji slip away from him.

“Good night,” he called out, maybe just to see Benji turn and look at him one more time.

Benji’s face was stunning in the moonlight. “Good night, Victor.”


	5. Every Heart Needs Some Company

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: internalized homophobia, brief discussion of alcoholism
> 
> Happy Thanksgiving! Here, have some quality Venji bonding to help you enjoy the holiday

An urgent buzzing woke Victor up on Sunday morning. It did not feel good to return to consciousness, what with the pounding in his head and the sharp ache in his neck and the way his mouth felt like someone had dumped a pile of sand into it while he’d been sleeping. He scrubbed at his eyes and blinked them open to an unfamiliar room.

_Oh, right. Mia’s house. Shit, I must be in so much trouble…_

Sure enough, the buzzing that had woken him up was his phone, lying on the floor next to the small sofa he’d attempted to fold his long limbs onto the night before. In the double bed nearby, Felix was snoring softly, still dead to the world. Mia had graciously let them stay in the guest bedroom last night when Victor had returned from walking Benji home. It had taken a joint effort to remove Felix from Mia’s bathroom and drag him half-stumbling into the guest bed, where he’d immediately gone back to sleep spread starfish-like across the entire mattress. That, plus the fact that his friend was really not smelling his best, led to a restless night for Victor on the tiny sofa.

Victor took a deep breath, steeling himself, and answered the phone.

“ _Victor Manuel Salazar Reyes_ ,” his mother’s voice growled, and Victor knew he was a dead man. “There had better be an _extremely_ good explanation for why you broke your curfew, ignored my calls, _stayed the night at some girl’s house_ , and are now not only letting down your family but also the lord by skipping mass this morning.”

There was a very long, very uncomfortable silence as Victor scrambled to think of something, anything, he could say in his own defense. There was nothing.

“I’m so sorry-” Victor started.

“Enough,” Isabel snapped. “I take it back, I am way too angry and disappointed in you to hear any excuses right now. We are going to church, and by the time we get home I expect to see you there, ready to have a discussion about the consequences of your actions. _Me entiendes_?”

“ _Si, Mami, lo siento mucho._ ”

The call ended, and Victor closed his eyes, wondering how he’d ended up in this mess. He was going to be grounded for the rest of the month. And he’d probably be stuck with all the worst chores for even longer than that. God, they’d probably make him deep clean the chicken coop for this.

It took several tries to wake Felix up, but eventually they were both upright and presentable enough to head downstairs. Mia was in the kitchen when they walked in, making herself a cup of tea. She bit back a smile when she saw how destroyed Felix looked.

“Yikes. I’d ask if y’all slept well, but I think I can guess the answer to that.” She nodded toward the counter behind her, where there was a pot of coffee brewing. “I have caffeine here if you want any, and there’s some cereal and stuff, too. Help yourself.”

Victor kind of just wanted to go home and clean himself up as soon as possible before his family got back from church, but Felix didn’t look like he was quite up to driving anywhere just yet and it would still be a couple of hours at least before the Salazars returned. He poured a couple of mugs of coffee for himself and Felix, and made them some toast.

Felix took exactly two bites of it before he was rushing out of the kitchen to the nearest bathroom.

“I’m really sorry about last night,” Victor said.

“It’s okay. It’s not really your fault.” Mia shook her head wryly. “That party was kind of a disaster, wasn’t it?”

Victor laughed. “I guess so. I haven’t been to a lot of parties, but I’m guessing they’re not usually so dramatic. Did you have any fun at least?”

“I spent half the night comforting Lake after the whole fiasco with Andrew, and the other half trying to make sure Felix wasn’t going to die in my bathroom. So, um, I’ve definitely had better parties. But the first five minutes of beer pong were fun…” She tapped her foot lightly against his under the table, glancing up at him from under dark lashes. In the soft morning light, with her hair a little messy and no make up on, she looked like a different girl than the one he saw at school everyday. She looked like someone he wanted to be close to. “I think we made a pretty good team.”

“Yeah, we totally would have won if the game hadn’t ended so early.”

With just him and Mia, all the other party goers gone now, the house seemed uncomfortably large and quiet. Surrounded by the oversized table with its enormous light fixture suspended above, the large bay windows overlooking the garden, the sparkling blue pool shining in the sunlight, and all the detritus of the party scattered around, Mia looked too small for the space.

“Will you have to clean all this up by yourself?” he asked.

“Oh, no, don’t worry about that. The housekeeper will be here in about an hour and she’ll help me with it. Plus, Lake promised she’d stay for clean up as well, since the party was pretty much her idea.”

“That’s good. Is it… is it weird for you, being here with your dad gone? In such a big house?”

Mia shrugged. “I’m used to it. Before this, back when my mom was still around, we lived in an apartment near campus that was kinda small. We were always fighting over who used up the hot water in the shower. But then she checked herself into rehab and never came back, and Dad got promoted, and we moved into this place. Dad’s always traveling for conferences and stuff like that, so I have it all to myself a lot of the time. Every teen’s dream come true, right? My own bathroom, a pool, zero supervision...”

Victor thought about what it would be like not to wrestle Pilar out of the bathroom in the mornings, not to squeeze onto the couch in between his mom and Adrian on movie nights, his little brother’s legs in his lap and his mom’s arm around his shoulders in their cozy living room. He’d always been a little embarrassed about his family’s financial struggles, but for the first time he found himself appreciating the way their little house kept them all close.

“That sucks,” Victor said, and Mia blinked in surprise. “I mean, it sounds really lonely.”

“Yeah, it kinda is. I’d do anything to go back to that old apartment.”

Lake wandered in then, her red dress wrinkled and blond hair all over the place. She made a beeline for the coffee. “Oh god, what was I thinking with that punch last night? You should not have let me open that second bottle of rum.”

“I did try to stop you. You told me to ‘leave the mixing to the expert’ and ‘not to worry my pretty little head.’”

As if drawn magnetically by the sound of Lake’s voice, Felix returned, but remained in the doorway waving frantically at Victor.

“Uh, just a second,” Victor said to Mia, and went into the hallway to talk to him.

“We have to get out of here,” Felix said, gesturing at his all yellow, vomit flecked, extremely rumpled clothing, and face still covered in obscene sharpie drawings. “There is no way Lake can see me looking like this. It will destroy any possibility of her ever finding me attractive.”

“You may have a point there,” Victor conceded.

Felix snuck out to the car while Victor said goodbye to Mia and thanked her profusely for both of them. The drive home was quiet, Felix white knuckled and staring intently at the road, and Victor really didn’t want to distract him from the task of getting them both home in one piece. He dropped Victor off at the start of his driveway, which Victor was relieved to see was still empty.

He cleaned himself up, had another cup of coffee for fortitude, and then since he didn’t want to be grounded for all of eternity, whipped up a batch of lemon cookies (his mom’s favorite). Sure it was a little desperate, but these were desperate times. When everyone arrived home, Isabel’s eyes narrowed suspiciously in the direction of the cookies lined up on the cooling rack, but when he offered her one she didn’t say no.

In the end, he managed to shave off an extra week of being grounded thanks to two factors: one, the lemon cookies, and two, the fact that he’d actually stayed behind in order to ensure that Felix didn’t try to drive home drunk, which Armando argued was actually a very responsible thing to do. He still ended up with two weeks plus some pretty hefty chores, but it could’ve been worse.

“Thanks for picking up my slack, big bro,” Pilar said, smirking at him when he passed her in the hall later that afternoon. “My chore schedule has never been so light. Feel free to screw up more often.”

Victor spent the rest of the day in his room, trying to finish his homework, but in reality he couldn’t stop thinking about everything that had happened in the last twenty four hours. Finally, he gave up on his Calculus and unlocked his phone.

_Hi Simon,_

_So, I went to a party at Mia’s house last night. A lot happened and now I’m feeling even more confused than I was before. I meant it when I said that I really like Mia. Whenever we’re together, it seems like we just get each other, and holding her hand, hugging her, it all feels so nice._

_The problem is… well, there’s also this guy. The one I told you about before, who used to go to your school and the reason I heard about your winter carnival love story. His name’s Benji and he goes to my high school now. We have a class together and we also work together, so I see him almost every day._

_Benji is really amazing. He’s smart, funny, patient, and so, so distracting. I thought that last night I’d be able to focus on moving forward with Mia, but I just kept ending up back with Benji. It’s not even the first time that something like this has happened… these kind of feelings for a guy, I mean, but it is so much harder to ignore with Benji and I don’t really know what to do. I’m really scared that if I can’t make things work with Mia, then it might mean…_

_It might mean that I’m like you. And I don’t think I can handle that._

_Mia is awesome, and I know I do feel something when I’m with her. It’s worth at least trying to see where things go with her, right? I do want to be happy, and if there’s a chance that I could be happy with her, I think I have to take it._

_Victor_

Things were weird at school on Monday following the party at Mia’s house. First, Benji wouldn’t look at Victor when he said hi to him in Chemistry, then Mia lingered by their desk for a while when the class finished, like she was waiting for something, and it wasn’t until he was on his way to sit with his friends at lunch that he realized she had probably been hoping that he’d ask her to eat with him. Felix had been acting strangely, too, staring off in Lake’s direction in the cafeteria and licking his lips too much… which wasn’t that unusual for him, unfortunately, but he was also zoning out a lot and he was usually a much better listener than that. When Victor tried to ask him about it Felix had looked shifty and said he’d explain later. As if all of that hadn’t been enough, Andrew wouldn’t talk to him or pass him the ball at practice until Coach Harris called him out on it.

He had a closing shift at Brasstown after school and Felix showed up around dinner time ostensibly to drink coffee and work on his homework. In reality, he seemed to be spending most of his time staring at Victor from across the room without blinking (he really didn’t blink enough, it was one of Victor’s Felix-related pet peeves.)

Even Benji noticed. “Is he okay? Did you guys have a fight or something?”

Victor shook his head. “I think he wants to talk. I have no idea why he’s being such a creeper about it though.”

“Well, it’s about time for your thirty minute break. Might as well take it now.”

Benji was still being oddly quiet and a little awkward around Victor. Their usual workplace flow in which Benji seemed to be able to psychically guess whatever Victor needed before he even asked for it, the two of them moving around behind the counter in perfect sync, had not been flowing so smoothly that night. Whenever there was a lull in the stream of customers, instead of chatting with Victor like he normally did, Benji found reasons to wander away, straightening the already well-organized shelf of mugs and coffee beans for sale, adjusting a picture on the wall that wasn’t all that crooked, and disappearing into the storage room for long periods. Victor figured that Benji was embarrassed about the night before and wanted to find some way to reassure him about it, but it was hard when Benji wouldn’t even look at him for more than a few seconds.

Victor made himself a drink and grabbed a sandwich from his locker, then went to join Felix at a table near the window.

“All right, spill. You’re driving me nuts with all the staring.”

Felix looked around to see who was nearby, then leaned forward with a huge grin. “Okay, so, last night at the party, something amazing happened.”

Victor raised his brows in surprise. He’d sort of assumed Felix had spent the entire night getting drunk by the punch bowl and then lying unconscious in Mia’s bathroom. “Well?” he prompted.

“Me and Lake hooked up.”

“What?” Victor nearly shouted. A college student nearby frowned at him and adjusted her headphones. He lowered his voice. “I mean, how on earth did that happen? When?”

“Y’all were playing beer pong, which looked like loads of fun, by the way, and then Lake came rushing inside, all upset and saw me in the hallway waiting for the bathroom. And she, like, just grabbed me by the shirt collar and pulled me into what I’m guessing was Mia’s dad’s office.” Felix licked his lips, the way he’d been doing all day long. “And that’s when she pounced. Victor, it was the best three minutes of my entire life. You have no idea.”

“Wow. Wait, just three minutes?”

“Well, some couple tried to come in the office, and Lake kinda freaked out and ran away. I tried to look for her so we could, y’know, talk about what happened and maybe do it again, but when I found her she was with Mia and did not look like she was in the mood.”

Victor leaned back in his chair in shock. “I can’t believe you managed to wait this long to tell me about this.”

Felix laughed. “Well, you might have noticed that I wasn’t exactly feeling my best on Sunday morning. And then, uh, something happened at school today, too.”

“Seriously? What happened?”

“I had to know if there was any possibility of something happening with us again or if it was just a drunken party hook up thing, so I found Lake before second period and tried to ask her about it. Um, and then she kinda dragged me into a utility closet and we made out again and it was freaking awesome. Except then the bell rang and she… she told me not to talk to her around other people and that if I told anyone about what was going on she’d, uh, do something really awful to my balls that doesn’t bare repeating. Obviously I’m taking a risk here telling you, but I’m pretty positive you’re not going to run around telling anyone.”

This was setting off some alarm bells for Victor. “What? Why all the secrecy? And wait, wasn’t Lake wearing red at the party? Is she with someone?”

Felix stared down at the table, fiddling with a napkin. “I asked her about the red dress while we were in the utility closet, and she said that she was just trying to look hot and unavailable. And boy did she look _hot_ in that dress. As for the secrecy… Well, uh… well, I think she might be sort of embarrassed to be seen with me?”

Victor sighed. “Felix. That is not cool.”

“I know! I know, but...” Felix trailed off. His napkin was rapidly turning into a pile of brown confetti. “But it was so good, Victor, I kind of don’t care. I know I should care, that it’s really messed up of her, but I’ve liked her for so long, and maybe if she gets to know me better, I don’t know...”

It was obvious that Lake had just grabbed Felix because she’d been rejected and humiliated by Andrew, and she needed someone to make her feel better about it. Victor should probably tell Felix what had happened, what Andrew had said, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Felix had been crushing on Lake since middle school and he really didn’t want to hurt his friend by pointing out that Lake was just using him.

“Look, I’m really happy that something finally happened with Lake, but you can’t let her treat you like crap,” Victor said. Felix nodded, but wouldn’t look at him. Victor had a feeling that no matter what he said, if Lake decided to pounce again, his best friend wasn’t going to be taking any of Victor’s advice. “Just be careful, okay?”

Felix nodded again. “What about you? Did anything happen with you and Mia on Saturday?”

All Victor could think about when he remembered Saturday was the feeling of Benji in his arms, Benji’s head resting on his shoulder, Benji’s face in the moonlight. Benji who was right there, on the other side of the room, a strand of soft golden brown hair falling down over his brow, looking so perfect it made panic bubble up inside of him.

“Not much. I mean, she was pretty distracted by everything that was going on with Lake, and then trying to make sure that a _certain someone_ didn’t wreck her bathroom.”

Felix had the decency to look ashamed of himself.

“Uh, yeah, I really should’ve stayed away from that punch. What was even in that stuff? But, I have to say, it did look like things were going well for you guys during the beer pong. Don’t think I didn’t see you two holding hands out there.” Felix grinned at him, and Victor forced himself to smile back, bottling up the shame he was feeling and shoving it down deep. He wished he could just like Mia the way everyone expected him to.

 _I do like Mia_ , Victor corrected himself, and it was true. He did like her, a lot. But he could see Benji out of the corner of his eye, Benji’s mere presence tugging at his gaze like a magnet, and he worried that maybe liking her a lot just wouldn’t be enough. _It has to be. Mia is so pretty and such a great person and it will be enough. It will be._

They were halfway through the closing routine that night when Victor couldn’t stand the awkward silence anymore and walked right up to a startled Benji in the storage room, who promptly dropped a box full of plastic lids all over the floor.

“Crap, sorry,” Victor said, bending down with Benji to help clean up the mess.

Their hands met on a bag of lids, that now familiar spark shooting through Victor at the touch of their fingers, and there was a long moment of breathless eye contact that had Victor’s face flushing and his mouth going dry. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t look away. It felt like time had frozen both of them there and they might have stayed that way forever until Victor lost his mind and did something insane like grab Benji and- but then Benji’s phone chose that moment to buzz loudly in his pocket.

Victor yanked his hand away and struggled to remember what he’d even come in there for.

Right. To talk about what had happened the other night and get over all this awkwardness with Benji so they could go back to working together normally. It was such a success so far.

Benji looked at his phone while Victor threw the last few bags of lids back into the box. He returned it to its spot on the shelf and they both just stood there uncomfortably for a moment.

“That was my mom,” Benji said, a little stiffly, and it seemed like he was just saying it for the sake of breaking the silence. “She’s gonna be late picking me up I guess.”

“Look, Benji, I think we should talk,” Victor said before he could chicken out of it. “It seems like things have been kind of weird between us since the party.”

“You’re right.” Benji hung his head, leaning back against the shelf. “Sorry. I just hate that you had to see me like that. It’s really embarrassing.”

The expression on Benji’s face was so dejected that Victor wanted nothing more than to reach out and touch him, but he couldn’t allow himself to do that. He stuffed his hands into his pockets to prevent himself from giving in to temptation.

“You don’t have to feel bad about it. I’m glad that I could help you get home safely. And if you’re worried that I’m going to tell people what you said, you don’t need to be, because I would never share something like that.”

“I know you wouldn’t. I trust you, Victor.” Benji looked up at him finally, something soft in his gaze. “I just feel embarrassed that now you know what a screw up I am.”

“You really need to stop saying that. You’re definitely _not_ a screw up. Making some mistakes doesn’t take away all of the good things about you, and I’m positive that there are _way_ more good things about you than bad.”

Benji sighed. “It means a lot that you say that… but you don’t really know me that well. The truth is, before I came out, I was a mess. I knew I was gay, but I hated it. So I drank. A lot. And I did some really stupid things, like sleeping with the wrong people and driving drunk. One night I got super wasted and decided I was hungry, so I took my dad’s car and literally drove it right through a Wendy’s. No one got hurt, luckily, but it was a big turning point for me.”

“Wow.” Benji had mentioned it the other night, but it was still hard to believe. “Were you okay?”

“Just a little banged up, but nothing serious. The thing is, when I woke up in the hospital and realized that I could have died without ever really being myself, I knew that I couldn’t keep living like that anymore. So that’s when I came out to my parents, right there in the hospital bed. I started going to AA after that and I got a job at Brasstown in Atlanta so I could pay back my parents for some of the debt I’d landed them with.”

“Wow. That’s… that’s a lot,” Victor said. “Thank you. For telling me all of that. I’m sorry that I talked you into going to the party, I guess I probably put you in an awkward position...”

“No,” Benji hurried to say, “No, Victor, slipping up the other night was on me, not you. I knew that there would most likely be alcohol at the party and I thought that after almost a year of sobriety I would be strong enough to stay away from it. But it turns out I wasn’t.”

It was so difficult to stand a couple feet away from Benji, doing nothing to comfort him, when he looked so filled with self-loathing. He shuffled over, leaning close to Benji against the shelf, their arms nearly touching. He kept his hands in his pockets, fingers curling up in fists inside them.

“Benji… It sounds like you’ve been through a lot. Not just what you told me, but recently, too. I mean, you just broke up with your boyfriend a few days ago, right? I’m not going to pretend to know what it’s like, having a problem with alcohol, but I think it’s pretty amazing that you went for almost an entire year without drinking. You _are_ a really strong person, and I don’t think that slipping up just one time in a whole year changes that.”

Benji reached a hand up to scrub at his eyes, sniffing a little, and Victor realized that he’d made Benji cry and wanted to kick himself. Hard.

“Oh god, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have brought all of this up...”

“You apologize way too much, has anyone ever told you that? It’s fine, I think… I think I just really needed to hear someone say that.” Benji moved just a fraction closer, and Victor could feel the skin of their bare arms touching, sending a shiver racing down his back like lightning. “I’ve been having a hard time lately. It’s not easy, moving to a new town halfway through high school. Especially when you’re gay and that new town is in rural Texas. I’m trying to make the most of it, but I don’t have many friends here yet, and then Derek dumped me, and it just started to feel like too much. It’s not an excuse, really, but...”

“It’s okay to not be perfect,” Victor said, even though the more he got to know Benji, the more sure he was that Benji really _was_ perfect, flaws and all.

Benji’s phone buzzed again, and he swore when he looked down at it. “We have got to finish closing up, it’s already twenty past and my mom just got here.” Benji bumped shoulders with him, smiling and looking at Victor with a kind of wonder. “You are so easy to talk to. I’m really glad you started working here.”

Victor smiled back, something in his chest feeling tight and fluttery, like his heart was a bird beating its wings inside of him. “Yeah, me, too.”

The sound of cicadas outside Victor’s bedroom window was the soundtrack to his insomnia that night, a high pitched hum that faded in and out with the rhythm of his breath. There were crickets, too, and cows from the field a half mile down the road. Inside the house, though, everything was silent. Victor was barely aware of the mattress underneath him. He felt like he was floating in the middle of a huge pool of water, his body weightless and untethered.

He was scared to close his eyes. Lately he kept dreaming, the kind of restless, sheet-twisting, electric dreams that woke him up in the middle of the night aroused and ashamed. He was trying so hard not to think about who was being conjured up by his unconscious mind _(sometimes Daniel, more often than not these days Benji, never Mia, never any girl at all)_ because thinking about it made it hard to breathe, made his heart race and the edges of his vision turn black, until he lost time, until he found himself back in this numb state, floating endlessly and unable to sleep.

Benji had said, _“I could have died without ever really being myself. I knew I couldn’t keep living like that anymore.”_

How much longer could Victor keep living like this?

 _I hate it, too,_ Victor thought. _I hate it so much._


	6. Normal Is A Myth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: description of a panic attack, internalized homophobia, some pretty intense heterosexism/heteronormativity
> 
> There's a fair amount of Spanish in this chapter, so just a reminder that it is mainly small talk and pet names. But remember, Google Translate is there for you if you're really curious! I am not including translations because I feel like it will disrupt the flow of the story.

_Hey there Victor,_

_So… Mia and Benji both sound like really cool people, and it’s awesome that things are going well for you with Mia right now._

_You might not want to hear this, but I think I have to say it anyway. It’s okay if you’re attracted to Mia, AND it’s okay if you’re attracted to Benji. There’s nothing wrong with you either way, Victor. If it turns out that you are like me, that’s probably going to be difficult for you given what you’ve told me about your situation, but it won’t stay difficult forever._

_I’m not gonna lie and tell you that being gay is_ _all_ _rainbows and pride parades. It’s not. It can be pretty difficult at times_ _, especially at the beginning when you’re still figuring things out and learning to accept this new part of yourself. I was scared at first and for a little while I didn’t want to be gay. But now I wouldn’t change this part of me for anything. Being gay has given me Bram, and an incredible community, and a unique way of seeing the world. It’s something to be celebrated, not ashamed of._

_Whoever you are, Victor, gay, straight, bi, pan, whatever, you are worthy of love. You deserve a great love story, too._

_Simon_

Victor felt his hands begin to tremble as he stood at his locker between periods and read the new message from Simon. By the time he reached the end, his vision had started to blur with tears he didn’t dare let fall there of all places. He took a deep, steadying breath, and forced everything he was feeling down, down, and away, as far away from himself as he could. His face was partially shielded by the door of his open locker, but anyone could look at him now and catch his mask slipping, and he couldn’t take that risk. It had been stupid to read the message at school; he should have waited until he was alone.

It didn’t help that his next class was Chemistry, with both Mia and Benji. He shut his locker and rushed to the bathroom on his way to class, taking a moment to scrub cold water across his face and let it carry away the evidence of all that he was feeling. He ended up being a few minutes late, earning himself an exasperated glare from Ms. Thomas as he hurried to sit down at the table he shared with Mia.

He and Mia worked well together, like they always did, and it eased some of the tension inside of him. There was something so comfortable about being with Mia, talking with her, like they’d been friends for so much longer than just the past month since school had started. It reassured him, made him feel like maybe everything would work out okay after all.

But then class finished, and Benji walked up to their desk, and just the sight of him had Victor feeling like the mask he’d carefully put back in place was crumbling away to nothing. It was hard to look at Benji without feeling exposed, so Victor shot him a quick smile and kept his gaze focused on packing his notebooks and pens into his backpack.

“Hey,” Benji said, “How’s your project going?”

“Really good, thanks to this guy.” Mia put a hand on Victor’s arm, giving it a little squeeze. “I didn’t really get the lab part that we did last week, but Victor figured it out right away. I’m starting to think the whole basketball star thing is just a front to hide the fact that he’s really a super secret science nerd.”

The affectionate way both Mia and Benji were staring at him just then had Victor wanting to squirm in his seat. He couldn’t help admitting, “I, uh, might have won second place at the science fair in eighth grade.”

“Wow, you really lucked out with him, Mia,” Benji said. Something in the tone of his voice made Victor want to look up at him, to see the look on his face when he said those words, but Victor couldn’t bring himself to do it with Mia sitting right next to him. All he could think of was Saturday night, Benji staring at his yellow tank top in the shadows of the gazebo, saying _“_ _Mia’s a really lucky girl.”_

Lake, who was Benji’s partner for the project, joined them then, smacking Benji playfully on the shoulder. “Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?

Benji laughed. “Just that maybe neither of us is really science nerd material.

“Can’t argue with that.” Lake pressed a hand to her stomach. “I am starving, y’all. Shall we get going?”

“Do you wanna join us, Victor?” Mia asked. She was looking a him so hopefully, biting her bottom lip a little. Victor could feel Lake and Benji’s eyes on them, and as much as the idea of spending time around both Mia and Benji had him freaking out, he just didn’t have it in him to say no to her without any good excuse.

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Victor said and was rewarded by a bright smile from Mia. As they were leaving the room, Mia slipped her hand into his, soft and so much smaller than his own, lacing their fingers together. Benji and Lake were just ahead of them. Victor tried to focus on the feeling of Mia beside him and ignore everything else, like the approving looks everyone was giving them in the hallway, and the way Benji’s hair caught the light, how his shirt hugged his shoulders, the fabric twisting a little as he walked. _Mia. Focus on Mia,_ Victor reminded himself.

In the cafeteria, Victor ended up with Benji on one side of him and Mia on the other, and it was a special kind of torture. He only managed to eat half of the sandwich he’d brought with him for lunch, his appetite fading quickly as the vise of panic gripped his chest and squeezed harder and harder. The room felt too crowded, too loud, there were so many eyes on them, Victor couldn’t breathe. He wiped his cold palms against his jean-clad thighs to rid them of sweat.

To his left, he could feel Mia pressed up against him, their hips and shoulders touching, and she leaned in even closer at times to talk or ask him about something. People Victor barely knew gave him little nods as they passed by. His own group of friends were right in his line of sight, shooting him amused glances from a few tables away, Feña and Matt making stupid faces at him and blowing kisses teasingly, Alicia rolling her eyes at them and Jeremy sullenly ignoring all of it. Meanwhile Felix looked torn between encouragement and jealousy of Victor’s proximity to Lake.

On his right was Benji, who it turned out was left-handed, which meant that every time Victor or Benji raised their hand to eat or drink something their elbows would bump into each other. There was a space of several inches between them, but no matter how hard he tried Victor couldn’t shut off his awareness of Benji’s body. If he moved just a little, he could close that distance and feel Benji’s thigh and side and shoulder all pressed along his own, the way Mia was to his left. What would happen to all those looks of approval he was getting if he were to do that? If he was with Benji instead of Mia, how would everyone look at them?

There were still fifteen minutes left before the bell would ring, but Victor’s stomach felt like it was full of nothing but acid and the closed-in, suffocating feeling in his chest was becoming unbearable. He had to get out of there.

He stood abruptly, grabbing his bag, and everyone looked up at him in surprise. “Uh, sorry, I just remembered that I didn’t finish something for my next class, so… uh, I’m just gonna head over there early.”

“Oh, okay,” Mia said, the disappointment in her voice reaching Victor even through the incessant buzz of panic in his ears.

He left quickly, not daring to look back at anyone, and hid in a bathroom stall until the bell rang, just trying to figure out how to breathe again. When he did catch his breath, it hurt.

“Hey, _flaco_ , grab me those plates,” Victor’s dad said that evening, gesturing toward a stack of them on the counter. Victor brought them over to the table where a large dinner was already spread out, along with a bottle of wine and glasses

“Are we having company tonight?” he asked, laying out the plates and noting the two extras.

“Yeah, remember? We told you guys yesterday that Abuelo Tito and Abuela Nati are coming over.”

“Oh, sorry. Guess I forgot about it.”

Victor loved his grandparents, but he wished they weren’t coming. His mom always got stressed out whenever they came over, which tended to lead to fights with his dad, and after the horrible day he’d had at school and all his confusion over Benji and Mia, Victor really did not need all of that. But he knew he would have to suffer through dinner anyway, so he said nothing and helped his dad finish setting up the table.

His _abuelos_ arrived about ten minutes later, unfortunately right on time to catch the end of a screaming match in the hallway between Isabel and Pilar over the volume of Pilar’s music and appropriateness of her outfit for a family dinner (according to Isabel the music was deafening and the outfit – an oversized, ripped black t-shirt featuring Billie Eilish with fishnet stockings underneath – completely unacceptable). Abuela Nati raised her brows in that superior fashion she sometimes had, pointedly not looking toward the source of the screaming as she allowed Armando and Victor to greet her with a kiss to the cheek.

“ _C_ _ó_ _mo est_ _á_ _n ustedes?_ ” Abuelo Tito asked. He nodded toward the hall where Pilar’s door had just slammed shut with an echoing thud. At least the music had finally stopped, thank god. There was only so much angsty alternative rock Victor could take in one evening. Tito looked a little concerned. “ _Todo bien?_ ”

 _“_ _Si, si, no te preocupes_. You know how teenagers are,” Armando said, with a wry smile. “Come on in. _Quieren algo para tomar?_ _Hay agua, vino, te...”_

Soon everyone was seated around the table, Pilar in a new set of clothes that were only slightly less likely to scandalize Abuela Nati, and Adrian with his new Olaf plushie that he was insisting on taking with him literally everywhere (even into the bath; poor Olaf was still looking a little bedraggled). Armando said grace, everyone crossed themselves dutifully, and then the dishes were being passed around and the bottle of wine opened.

“Why not let Victor have a taste?” Abuelo Tito said as Armando filled a glass for him. Tito winked at Victor. “I’m sure my father was already letting me have a little wine with dinner by his age.”

Isabel pursed her lips, no doubt reminded of the fact that Victor was currently grounded for having been drinking at a party over the weekend, but unwilling to mention that in front of Tito and Nati. She was clearly sending a warning to Armando with her eyes, but he just laughed and poured a little of the wine into a glass for Victor.

“Sure, why not. I can’t believe he’s going to be sixteen soon. I feel like I’m just gonna turn around one of these days and he’s going to be headed off to college, getting a job, getting married...” Armando grinned. “Try not to grow up so fast, okay _muchacho_?”

Victor took a small sip of his wine and didn’t look in his mother’s direction. He could practically feel her irritation radiating toward him and Armando from across the table. “Don’t worry, _Papi_ , I still have plenty of time before I have to worry about all of that stuff.”

“Well, don’t wait too long,” Abuela Nati said. “Haven’t you met any nice girls at that school of yours? A handsome young man like you shouldn’t have any trouble finding a girlfriend.”

“ _Pilar_ has a _boyfriend_ ,” Adrian said excitedly. “He comes over sometimes and they watch movies and he kinda looks like Kristoff.”

Abuelo Tito frowned. “ _Quien?_ ”

 _“_ Just a character from that movie Adrian likes,” Isabel explained.

“Not that _Frozen_ movie? Isn’t that supposed to be for little girls?” Tito complained. He complained about Adrian’s obsession with Disney princess films pretty much every time he came over. Victor caught the way Adrian slumped down in his seat, his bottom lip pushing out, and hated that Tito was making his little brother feel ashamed of something he loved.

“It’s popular with all the kids his age,” Victor said and the frown on Tito’s face was worth it for the way Adrian relaxed and held his Olaf doll a little tighter.

“I just don’t understand you kids,” Abuela Nati started, and Victor dreaded where that sentence was headed. “Things were not like this, not when I was a girl. The little sister moving faster at fourteen than her older brother? _Es muy raro_.”

“There’s nothing wrong with them taking an interest in dating at their own paces,” Isabel shot back.

Abuela Nati looked offended. “So you’re just fine with this one running around with boys at her age? Dressing the way she does?”

Pilar huffed angrily, slouching back in her seat and crossing her arms over her chest. “ _Abuela, por favor._ Do we have to talk about my clothes every time we see you? What’s wrong with the way I dress?

“What’s wrong? Look at this shirt, what is that supposed to be?” she gestured at the band logo on Pilar’s shirt, that featured flaming skulls as part of the motif. Victor thought Pilar probably would’ve been better off sticking with Billie Eilish. “It looks like devil worship.”

“It’s just a band she likes. I don’t think it’s fair of you to be so critical of the kids just because things were different with your generation,” Isabel said firmly, and then punctuated this with a large sip of red wine. Pilar stared at her incredulously, no doubt remembering how Isabel had screamed at her about her fashion choices not thirty minutes earlier.

“ _Mami_ , let me get that plate for you,” Armando cut in, clearly trying to defuse the rapidly deteriorating situation. “How about some desert? I picked up a _milhojas_ from that bakery you like.”

Things remained a little tense for the rest of the evening, Isabel and Pilar not participating much in the conversation that was mainly left to Armando and his parents. Victor joined in after a bit, talking about school and his chemistry project, his new job at Brasstown, anything to keep the topic away from something that would set off Abuela Nati again.

“Didn’t you say that Mia was your partner for that project at school?” Armando asked him, as he was describing what they were working on. Armando patted his shoulder proudly. “Actually, Victor went out with this Mia a couple of times recently. Seems like he might have finally met a nice girl after all.”

The exclamations of surprise and excitement from his grandparents felt a little overly exuberant and Victor wanted to sink into his chair in embarrassment. Why did his dad have to mention Mia? They were never going to let this go now.

“All right, Victor, way to go!” Abuelo Tito said, clapping him on the back. “Tell us all about this girl!”

He seriously wanted to kill his dad, but it was hard to stay angry with all of them when they were looking at him with so much pride. A heavy feeling, like guilt, settled over him instead. “Uh, she’s really nice. We’ve only gone out once, though...”

“But you like her, don’t you? Oh Victor, that is so wonderful,” Abuela Nati gushed. “You have to let us meet her sometime. Why don’t you invite her to a family dinner? Or church some weekend?”

“Uh,” Victor stammered, no idea how to respond to his overly eager grandmother.

Abuelo Tito laughed. “Calm down, _mi amor_ , you’re going to give the poor kid a heart attack. I’m sure we’ll get to meet her eventually, if things go well. Isn’t that right, Victor?”

“Um, yeah. Sure.”

It was a school night, so Tito and Nati didn’t stay much longer after desert had been finished. Adrian was practically bouncing off the walls after the extra portion of _milhojas_ he’d been treated to by Abuela Nati, much to Isabel’s annoyance, and kept demanding Victor read him just “one more” book before bed, and then he just needed a glass of water, and then _Olaf_ needed a glass of water… Usually after Victor read him a book their mother would come in and take over, tucking Adrian in and kissing him goodnight, but as Victor was finishing book two he caught the sound of raised voices from the kitchen and ended up reading an extra couple of books just to distract his brother.

“They’re fighting again, aren’t they,” Adrian said, when Victor set his water down on the nightstand.

Victor sighed. He pulled the covers up over Adrian and leaned down to kiss his forehead.

“Yeah, they are. I’m sorry, buddy, just try not to listen. They just disagree about stuff sometimes, but it doesn’t mean that they don’t love each other, or all of us. They love you so much, you know.”

Adrian nodded. He carefully tucked Olaf in under the blanket beside him, until only the top half of the snowman’s head with its big carrot nose was visible. “I know. But… what about Abuelo? Does he love me?”

The way Adrian was looking at him, so much vulnerability in his big brown eyes, broke Victor’s heart a little bit. “Of course he does. Why would you ask that?”

“I dunno.” Adrian was quiet for awhile, long enough that Victor was about to leave, when he suddenly asked, “Victor? Is it bad to play with girl toys?”

“No, buddy. It doesn’t matter which toys are supposed to be for girls and which are for boys, you can play with whatever you like. Abuelo Tito shouldn’t say stuff like that. He’s wrong. You just be yourself, okay? I promise I’ll love you no matter what.”

“I love you, too, Victor.”

Victor gave him another kiss. “Good night, _hermano.”_

Adrian held up his snowman. “Olaf too!”

Rolling his eyes, Victor kissed the snowman as well, and then turned out the lights. He could still hear shouting coming from the kitchen when he entered the hallway, louder now than before, and he shut his eyes, jaw clenching, as he wished there was some way to drown them out.

“-you just let her walk all over you! You let her say whatever she wants, about _our children_ -”

“That’s not fair, you know she’s nearly seventy, it’s not her fault that she sees things differently than-”

“-you’re just doing it again! Why are you always defending them? Why aren’t you ever on my side?”

Victor hurried into his own room, closing the door firmly behind him, and sank onto his bed. He popped in his earbuds, pulling up a playlist, anything to block out the sound of his parents’ voices. The opening notes of _Call Me Maybe_ came on, bringing with them memories of dancing in the cafe, of feeling happy and free and lost in the moment, and more himself than he ever allowed himself to be.

 _“_ _You just be yourself, okay? I promise I’ll love you no matter what.”_

God, Victor wished with everything in him that someone would say those words to him, too.

“So, you know Homecoming is, like, next week, right?” Felix said as he drove them to school a couple days later.

Victor leaned against the passenger door, his head against the window. He hadn’t slept much the night before, what with the sounds of another nasty argument echoing through the house, piling on top of the confusion and fear and self-hate that already consumed his nights on a regular basis these days. He’d have given just about anything to be able to crawl back into bed for a few more hours.

“Okay,” he said flatly, unable to dredge up any feelings of excitement.

Felix frowned at him. “Jeez, Victor, it’s a school dance, not a funeral.”

Victor sighed, running a hand over his face in an attempt to wake himself up a little. “Sorry. Things have been kinda shitty at home lately."

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, it’s just the usual crap… My parents are fighting constantly, mom and Pilar are fighting constantly, Adrian is freaked out by it and acting really clingy with me, since I’m the only other person in the house that’s not angry all the time...”

“That really sucks, man, I’m sorry. But hey, maybe Homecoming could be a fun distraction from all of that? I mean, you could ask Mia, I’m like one hundred percent positive she’d say yes, and, uh… I think I’m going to ask Lake. I mean, I am going to ask her. Today.”

Victor didn’t really know how he felt about asking Mia to go to Homecoming with him. It was kind of a big thing in Texas, with girls showing up with gigantic corsages made of mums and covered in all kinds of crazy decorations. Usually the guy’s mom would be the one to make the corsage for his date, and he knew that his mom would lose her mind with excitement if he asked her to make one for Mia.

But asking Mia to go with him and asking his mom to do something like that, it sounded so serious, like Mia maybe would officially become his girlfriend at that point. He knew that he liked her and that everyone else wanted them to be together, but was he really ready for that? Could he and Mia actually make each other happy? He’d been trying to convince himself to pursue something with her in order to take this chance at being normal, so asking her to the dance and then maybe asking her to be his girlfriend were the logical next steps to take.

“Wow, that’s awesome, Felix. Have things been getting better with you guys?”

“Well… uh, we’ve kinda, um, spent more time in that utility closet?” Felix laughed nervously.

“Okay, but is she treating you better now? Like, actually talking to you around other people?”

Felix bit his lip. “Well, not really. But it’s fine, Victor! I think Homecoming could be my chance to get her to see me in a new way, you know? I found this great suit in town the other day, at that second hand store by the college, and I gotta admit I look pretty darn charming in it. Lake will not be able to resist that. Or, at least, that’s what I’m hoping...”

Victor fought past his exhaustion to give Felix a small but genuine smile. “She would be a fool to say no.”

“What about you? You’re going to ask Mia, right?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I’m supposed to be grounded, so my parents probably won’t even let me go anyway...”

“Oh, come on,” Felix said, rolling his eyes. “They would be overjoyed to see you taking a nice girl to a school dance. Your mom would totally freak. I’m sure they would make an exception for Homecoming.”

Maybe asking Mia _was_ the right thing to do. He liked her, she seemed to like him, and it was what everyone expected of him. So, it had to be right, didn’t it? Why did it feel so strange then? _Because I’m the one that’s not right. There’s something wrong with me, and that’s why I feel like this…_

_...but it might not be too late to fix it._

“I guess so.” Victor nodded slowly, coming to a resolution. “Yeah, maybe you’re right. I think I will ask her.”

Felix whooped. “Yes! Here’s to us taking two of the most beautiful girls at school to Homecoming! I told you this was gonna be a good year for us. I had a feeling.”

Victor ran into Mia in the hallway later that day, but with all the people crowded around them, it didn’t feel like the right time to ask her. They ended up eating lunch with his friends (who acted embarrassingly weird around Mia, but luckily she didn’t seem to notice) but there was no way he was going to ask her in front of all of them either. So, at the end of the day, he went looking for her before basketball practice and found her in the art classroom.

“Whoah,” he said, watching as she moved a torch around the joint in a metal sculpture, her face protected and completely obscured by a long mask. The sculpture was large and abstract, all twisting iron bars that cast a tangled web of shadows across the floor.

She jumped a little when she noticed him, and immediately turned off the torch, lifting her mask to reveal her face, flushed and pleasantly surprised. “Victor! You really shouldn’t sneak up on someone who could accidentally melt your face off.”

“Are you welding?” he asked.

“Kinda. I mean, technically this is just my dad’s crème brulee torch, but a girl’s gotta make do with what she’s got.”

“That’s so cool,” he said, staring at the sculpture. He had no idea what it was supposed to be, or represent, or whatever, but he knew he liked it. There was something really… _graceful_ about the way the metal bars curved around and into each other. “I didn’t know you were into art.”

She shrugged. “It runs in the family, I guess. My dad’s head of the art department at Brandon College, that’s why our house kinda looks like a museum, you know, with all the stuff he’s collected. I guess that’s one good thing about our new house, I get to be surrounded by beautiful works of art every day. It’s really inspiring, actually.”

“Maybe you can teach me something about art sometime, then. Like, what were you trying to express with this one?”

Mia ducked her head, her hands nervously reaching up to fiddle with the strap of her mask. “Um, I don’t know. I just wanted to create something big enough to make a shadow. There’s this artist, Gertrude Barnstone, that said that, and I really love her work. She said that she wanted to make something that would take up space in the world.”

“I like that.” Victor said, smiling as Mia finally looked up and caught his eye. She really did look beautiful just then, with the light from the windows catching on her curls, crowning her head like a halo. “Um, I actually came in here to ask you about something.”

He swallowed nervously, looking away from her to gather his courage. _Come on, Victor, you can do this._

“So, I kind of got grounded after the party last weekend, but my parents are big fans of cheesy stuff like school dances, so I’m pretty sure that if I ask them they’ll let me out of the house for Homecoming… and if they do, I was wondering if you’d like to go with me?”

He chanced a look at Mia to gauge her reaction, and was startled to see a smile on her face as big and bright as the sun shining down on them through the windows. It reassured him, that he found her so beautiful just then.

“Yeah,” Mia said. “Yeah, I’d really like that.”

“Awesome. Well, I’ll let you know if can talk my parents into it. See you later, Mia.”

Victor’s good mood after successfully asking Mia to Homecoming carried with him all the way through basketball practice, where he made nearly every shot he took much to the delight of Coach Harris. Even Andrew continuing to be weird around him couldn’t bring down his game, at least not until things got tense when they were in the locker room after practice.

“Yo, Salazar,” Kieran said, leaning against the lockers near Victor, who was seated on a bench tying his shoes. “What’s up with you and Mia?”

This immediately caught the attention of most of their teammates, who all started grinning and staring at Victor. He tried not to let them see him blush.

“I don’t know, we’ve just been hanging out,” he said.

Damien raised his brows. “’Just hanging out’? Yeah right dude, we’ve all seen you two mooning at each other in the cafeteria. Did something happen with you guys at the stoplight party?”

“Nothing happened. We just went on like one date recently.”

Everyone started laughing and shoving him playfully at that revelation, except for Andrew who slammed his locker door shut with a lot more force than necessary.

“I knew it!” Damien shouted. “Just admit it, you guys totally hooked up at that party!”

Andrew stalked over, a smile stretched over his lips that was anything but friendly. “He said nothing happened, Abrams. You really think Mia would be into some skinny kid like Victor?”

The tone of Andrew’s voice was clearly meant to be teasing, but it couldn’t hide the fury that was barely hidden in his eyes. Victor could feel his own temper rising. If Andrew liked Mia so much, why hadn’t he ever acted on it? As far as Victor knew, the two of them hardly ever interacted at school and he’d never really seen Andrew try to approach her. Andrew had no right to be acting like Victor was moving in on his territory or whatever.

“Well, apparently I am what she’s into, because she’s letting me take her to Homecoming,” Victor snapped. The other guys laughed and cheered, patting Victor on the back in approval, while Victor stared up at Andrew challengingly.

Andrew’s jaw clenched and Victor could see his hands curling up into fists at his sides, and Victor’s own body tensed up in response, ready to defend himself if Andrew attacked him. But Andrew just turned on his heel and stormed away, back to his own locker, muttering “idiots” and shoving past Kieran roughly as he went.

That night, as Victor sat at his desk, he stared at the reply window on the bottom of his phone screen and mentally composed various messages to Simon. It had been days since he’d gotten Simon’s last message, and he still hadn’t responded. He didn’t know what to say.

 _Hi Simon,_ _g_ _uess what? I don’t think I’m like you after all…_

_So, Simon, I’m taking Mia to Homecoming. I think it might be a way to fix whatever’s wrong with me…_

_Simon, thanks for your advice, but maybe I don’t need it, because I’m not..._

_Not what? Not “like Simon”? Not… gay?_

Victor cringed at even thinking the word. He hated seeing it there, in the message Simon had sent to him, in dark, impossible to miss letters against the bright white background of the screen. He’d ended up deleting every attempt to write a reply, and finally gave up in frustration, tossing his phone onto the bed just to get it away from him.

Simon had said _“You might not want to hear this”_ and he’d been right. Victor didn’t want to hear that it was okay for him to be attracted to Benji, or to any other guy, and he didn’t want to hear about how great it was to be _gay_.

He just desperately, with everything inside of him, wanted to be normal.


	7. Whoah, We're Halfway There

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: internalized homophobia
> 
> I updated the final chapter count, so I'm aiming to finish at about 30 chapters, but this may change depending on how the story goes. Just keep an eye on that in case it changes later.
> 
> This chapter is my personal favorite so far, so I hope you all enjoy it! The chapter title credit goes to Bon Jovi.

Victor had not been wrong about his mom losing her mind with joy when she found out he’d asked Mia to Homecoming.

“ _Mijo!_ Oh my god, that is so exciting!” She practically lunged forward to wrap him up in a hug, squeezing him tight, and Victor couldn’t help melting into it a little bit. He’d always been closest to his mom and her happiness for him was infectious, even if a small part of him still felt dragged down by a nagging, heavy tug of guilt.

“Of course you can go to the dance,” she said, but then pulled back to eye him sternly. “But that’s it. Just the dance, no after parties, no other fun stuff until these two weeks are over, got it?”

He nodded. “ _Si, Mami.”_

“Okay. So, it’s this Saturday, right? That’s only a few days away, _mi amor_! What if all the flowers have sold out already?”

“You’re not going to make one of those giant corsages, are you? It’s kind of embarrassing...”

She shook her head. “It’s _traditional_ , Victor. You can’t have Mia be the only girl at the dance who didn’t get one, how do you think she’d feel then? No, we are definitely making one. What about clothes? You have that suit from last year, but...”

She trailed off, her excitement fading a little as she no doubt remembered why they’d bought the suit the year before. It was a nice one, all black and it fit him well, but he didn’t think he could wear something to a school dance that he’d worn to his grandfather’s funeral. It didn’t feel right.

“It’s okay, _Mami_ , I can go shopping for something after my shift at Brasstown today.”

“Do you want me to pick you up? We could go together,” she started to suggest, and then frowned. “Oh, shoot, sorry, I forgot I have a new student starting today...”

“Don’t worry about it, I think I’m old enough to find something on my own now,” Victor said.

“You really are growing up so fast, _mijo,”_ she said with a soft smile. “You’re going to be a really good man someday, I can already tell. We’re so proud of you.”

Victor was embarrassed to feel a heat in his eyes, tears starting to gather, and he turned his head to look out the window as he blinked them away. His mom seemed to realize her words had gotten to him, but she didn’t say anything, just leaned forward to hug him again.

She pulled back, smoothing his hair down gently. “You’ve always been our strong one, Victor. What would we do without you?”

Why did hearing her say that make the guilt inside of him grow suddenly so much thicker and heavier, an anchor dragging him down into a dark place? Victor was trying so hard to do the right thing, to make everyone happy, but the more he tried to be what they wanted, the more he felt like he was drowning.

Their moment was interrupted by a knock on the door, and Victor couldn’t help feeling grateful for the distraction. He gave his mom a quick kiss on the cheek, and bent down to scoop up his backpack. “I’ll see you later, Mom.”

“Bye, _cariño,_ have a good day!”

“Hey Felix,” Victor said, as he stepped outside, and then did a double take. “Uh, are you okay?”

Felix’s typically wild hair was more disheveled than usual, his clothes were wrinkled and badly coordinated even by Felix’s standards, and his face looked grim. His best friend just shrugged, scuffing the toes of his shoes against the dirt driveway as they walked toward his car.

“She said no,” Felix finally said, once they were both seated. He tipped his head back, sighing, and Victor couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Felix look so depressed. Not since his mother had gotten sick, anyway.

“Oh, shit, Felix, I’m so sorry,” Victor said.

“I guess I should’ve listened to you after all, since it turns out you were right about her. She’s just been using me this whole time, hasn’t she? All we ever do is make out in closets and dark corners where no one will see us, and she just ignores me the rest of the time. Why was I stupid enough to think she’d want to go to Homecoming with me?”

Felix started up the car, pulling out onto the road, his lips a thin, tight line across his face.

“You’re not the stupid one here,” Victor contradicted him, “she’s the one who’s too dumb to figure out what a great guy you are. She’s not good enough _for you_ , Felix, not the other way around.”

Felix shook his head. “You don’t really know her, though… I know everyone at school thinks she’s just this superficial girl that’s into clothes and gossip and whatever, but when it’s just the two of us, she’s actually really sweet sometimes. I don’t get how she can make me feel so good about myself one minute and then as soon as we’re in public make me feel like crap.”

“That’s not okay, man. I know you really like her, but maybe it’s time to move on.”

It didn’t look like Felix was ready to move on, and Victor hated seeing his friend look so heartbroken. It only got worse when they ran into Lake and Mia in the hallway at school, and Lake announced that she was going to Homecoming with Kieran. Felix’s expression looked like he’d just been stabbed in the gut and now Lake was twisting the knife around just for fun.

By some strange coincidence, Wendy Jacobson walked up to them at just that moment, smoothed her hands over her skirt, and then blurted out, “Felix, would you maybe wanna go to the dance with me?”

Felix blinked slowly and then said, “Um. Yeah. Okay.”

Wendy grinned and bounced on her heels. “Great! That’s amazing. I’ll, um, talk to you later then!”

Victor did not miss the way Lake’s eyes shot daggers after the other girl as she disappeared down the hallway. He and Mia exchanged a confused look then, as if to say _“What the hell is wrong with our friends?"_

He opened his mouth, about to say goodbye to the girls and head to class, when Mia surprised him by suddenly leaning up and pressing a quick kiss to his cheek. When she stepped back, she was biting her lip, her eyes sparkling.

“I’m really looking forward to Saturday,” Mia said.

_You can do this, Victor. It’s just a school dance. You got this._

“Yeah,” Victor said, nervous energy welling up inside of him, “me, too.”

“Hey,” Benji said, when the crowd of customers finally thinned out and they were granted a chance to lean back against the counter and catch their breath. It was further into the semester, that time when teachers begin to really pile on the work, so the college student clientele had tripled in the last few days. “What does this look like to you?”

Victor leaned over, dangerously close to Benji but unable to restrain himself, and looked at the latte art Benji had been working on.

“Is it… a meatball?”

Benji looked simultaneously embarrassed and like he wanted to laugh at himself. “...it’s a panda.”

“Oh yeah, I see it now,” Victor said, attempting to keep a straight face.

Benji did laugh then, elbowing Victor lightly in the side. “Liar.”

Victor leaned in a little closer, trying to ignore the warmth he could feel from Benji’s body, and pointed to a dark spot. “No, seriously, that’s the nose, right?”

“Those are _supposed_ to be eyes. Well, they _were_ eyes, but I think they kind of merged together somehow, so...”

“So it’s a cyclops panda?”

Benji grinned. “I’m calling dibs on that as my new band name.”

“Are you gonna start another band?” Victor asked, before he could think about what he was saying.

Benji’s brows raised. “’Another band?’ I don’t remember mentioning the old one to you.”

“Uh.” _Shit._ “I might have, um, stalked your Insta a little bit?”

Benji turned toward him slightly in the small space at the corner of the counter, and it left them standing practically flush, chest to chest. Victor already felt like his face was being slow roasted Texas BBQ style and this was seriously not helping things.

“I had no idea you were such a fan,” Benji teased.

“Well… we really don’t get a lot of new people around here,” Victor said lamely, for lack of any better explanation. There was no way he could tell Benji the truth, which was that he found himself on Benji’s account embarrassingly often, and that it’d been Benji’s story about Simon Spier that had led him there in the first place. “Can’t blame me for being a little curious.”

Their eyes caught and held for just a little too long, until a woman at the counter made them both jump by calling out “excuse me!” in a tone of voice that suggested it wasn’t the first time she’d tried to get their attention. Victor leaped back, rushing away to the store room to check on literally anything, he didn’t care, as long as it put some distance between him and Benji and the confusing feelings Benji always invoked in him. He spent several minutes just standing there staring at boxes full of napkins until his heart rate returned to normal.

When he deemed it safe to return, the counter was quiet again, and Benji was sipping the cyclops panda latte he’d made for himself. Benji’s eyes flicked up to his, and away again quickly.

“So,” Benji started, a slightly awkward note to his voice, “what’s up with you and Mia? I heard a rumor that you were taking her to Homecoming.”

“Uh, yeah, I am.”

Was Victor imagining it or was Benji fiddling around with the ties on his apron too much? He definitely didn’t seem as relaxed as he had a few minutes ago.

“Oh, that’s cool,” Benji said, in that same tone. “So are you two dating?”

Something about being asked that question by Benji made Victor’s chest feel too-tight, like that claustrophobic feeling was coming over him again. He took a slow breath, trying to push the sensation away. “I don’t know, maybe? I mean, we’ve only gone out once, but things seem to be going good so far...”

“Cool.”

It felt like the days after the stoplight party again, when Benji wouldn’t look him in the eye and there was a nervous tension between them. Victor asked, just to break the silence, “Are you going? To the dance, I mean?”

“I think so. I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to, but my mom’s been pushing me to go so I can make more friends here. She’s been kinda obsessed with making sure I settle in okay, probably because she feels guilty about making us all move out here just for her job. So if I don’t go she’ll be pretty crushed. And, um… there’s this guy I met recently, and I guess we might go together.”

Those words caused an immediate reaction in Victor’s body, his hands freezing where they were wiping down a spill on the counter, his eyes wide, his chest aching with an intensity that scared him. Why did this hurt so much? How was this any different than a week ago when Benji had had a boyfriend?

_Fuck. Fuck, I can’t-_

Victor sucked in an unsteady breath, forced his hand to move again, tried to hide the trembling of his fingers in the folds of the rag. _It’s fine. This is a good thing. I have Mia, and it doesn’t matter who Benji dates. It’s none of my business._

“Oh,” Victor said, finally. He hoped Benji couldn’t hear anything weird in the way he spoke. “That’s great.”

“Yeah, but I don’t really have anything to wear. My ex, Derek, he never wanted to go with me to school dances or stuff like that. He always said it was ‘too heteronormative’.”

Benji did little air quotes with his fingers when he said it. Victor just blinked at him.

“I have absolutely no idea what that means.”

There was a pause in their conversation as Benji took an order and Victor went to work making it, and then when it was quiet again, Benji explained, “It means a kind of assumption or expectation of heterosexuality. Like assuming that everyone is straight or should be straight. So, you know, something like a school dance carries this expectation that everyone there will be straight and behaving according to mainstream gender roles, etcetera. But in Derek’s case, it just meant anything he didn’t feel like doing. He wasn’t really into romantic stuff. He… he kind of made me feel bad about liking things like that.”

It was hard to ignore the way his heart was aching, but Victor shoved the feeling down, forced himself to say, as casually as he could, “Well, I hope this new guy treats you better than that. You deserve to have someone that appreciates you for who you are.”

Benji looked up at him in surprise, his eyes wide, and Victor hurried to move on from what he’d said before Benji could respond to it. He didn’t really want to know what Benji might say. He had a feeling it would only make his Benji-related feelings of confusion worse.

“I was actually gonna go shopping for something to wear after work tonight,” Victor blurted out, in his rush to move the topic along.

“Oh, well, would you want to go together? I think we both finish at six.”

Victor knew it was probably a bad idea, but he couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Sure, that’d be cool.”

A couple hours later, their manager, Sarah, arrived, along with a new employee she was training on the closing shift that evening. Victor and Benji clocked out, grabbed their stuff from the locker room, and headed out into the early evening heat. The Brandon town commons lay just across the street from the cafe, and there was a concert in full swing. Crowds of people were milling around between food stalls and the rows of chairs lined up in front of a small stage, where a band was playing something that sounded like a cross between folksy country music and bluegrass.

“I miss the air conditioning already,” Benji groaned, as the mid-ninety degree temperature hit them. “It’s October. When is it ever gonna cool down here?”

“Uh, Thanksgiving? Maybe? If we’re lucky anyway. Definitely by Christmas at least.”

“Jesus, and I thought Atlanta was bad.”

They stood on the sidewalk outside the cafe for a moment, not sure which direction to head in.

“So, did you have somewhere in mind for shopping?” Victor asked.

“Not really. I mean, I still don’t really know Brandon all that well. Where were you gonna go?”

Victor had a moment of hesitation in which he didn’t want to admit that he was planning on hitting up the same thrift store that Felix had been to. Brandon was a town that consisted of two separate and extremely different communities somehow attempting to coexist. On the one hand, you had the university people. There were the professors and staff and their families, who were liberal and generally more upper-class, and then there were the students, who were even more liberal and just as wealthy, since Brandon College was a private school that specialized in the arts, especially fine arts and music. Most of these people lived in the town center, either on campus or very close to it, in attractive brick apartment buildings or in the beautiful, perfectly manicured neighborhoods like the one Mia lived in.

On the other hand, there were the people like Victor and Felix’s families, who lived in the older parts of Brandon, in the countryside surrounding the town. This community was made up mainly of blue-collar workers and farmers, people who had lived in Brandon for generations. These people were more conservative and traditional, voted Republican, went to church every Sunday. They were about fifty-fifty white and Latino split. They lived in ranch style houses mostly built in the 1950’s or mobile homes like Felix’s, with land and animals and maybe a few pick up trucks in the yard.

The one place where these two very different worlds tended to overlap in Victor’s life was school. Just walking down the hallway it was obvious who belonged to which world, just by the quality of the clothes people wore, how clean and new and expensive their shoes were, whether or not they got a car for their sixteenth birthday that was worth a small fortune, whether or not they routinely came to school with grass stains on their jeans and smelling faintly of manure. Victor and Pilar and Felix had all been teased growing up for not being rich enough to fit into the upper-class Brandon world, and as much as Victor tried not to let it get to him, he still couldn’t help feeling sensitive about it. Especially since Benji was part of that other world, the academic, liberal, upper-class side of Brandon.

“Everything okay?” Benji asked, no doubt concerned by Victor’s long pause.

“Yeah, I was just thinking about where to go. Um, I was gonna hit up a thrift store, if that’s cool. It’s only a few blocks away from here.”

Benji grinned, and Victor didn’t realize how tense his shoulders had gotten until they suddenly relaxed. “That’s perfect. I am a big fan of second-hand clothes.”

“What, really?” In Brandon, no one except the most granola college students actually liked used clothes. You either wore them because you had no other choice or you turned your nose up at them and anybody pathetic enough to wear them.

“Yeah, of course. Where do you think I get all of these amazing, retro band shirts?” Benji gestured at the admittedly very cool, faded Pink Floyd t-shirt he was wearing. It clung to his shoulders just right, outlining the muscles underneath. Victor made himself look away quickly, and they started walking in the direction of the store. “I pretty much buy all my clothes second hand. I like stuff that feels like it’s already been out on its own in the world, like it’s been all over on who knows what kind of adventure and now it’s my turn to take it somewhere cool. Um... that’s kind of weird, isn’t it?”

“No. No, I really like that, actually.” Something warm was blossoming inside of Victor’s chest, melting away whatever tension was lingering there. “I never thought about it like that.”

“Plus,” Benji continued, with enthusiasm, “it’s basically like a scavenger hunt to find the treasure among all the boring mainstream stuff. Finding a really good, genuine retro band shirt is like the pot of gold at the end of the fashion rainbow for me. I bet with the college in town there should be some pretty good stuff where we’re going.”

“Well, Felix found something he liked, so hopefully we’ll luck out, too,” Victor said, leading them up to the front door of the shop. They walked in and Victor was instantly grateful for the cool breeze of air conditioning that wafted over him. There were a few other people browsing around, mostly twenty-something college student types sporting lots of tattoos and too much flannel, and a young guy with a huge beard and some kind of metal hoops stretching out his earlobes stood behind the cash register. Victor couldn’t help feeling a little out of place.

“I think I see some formal wear over in the corner,” Benji said, and Victor followed him over to the back of the shop, where there were a couple of racks of suits and blazers. Nearby ties and a strange assortment of belts and hats hung on the wall. “Nice,” Benji said, grabbing a white Stetson off of a hook and trying it on. He tipped the brim at Victor playfully. “On a scale of one to Chuck Norris, just how Texan do I look right now?”

Victor laughed. “I’m only giving you, like, a three for that. You can’t just drop a cowboy hat on your head and call it a day. What about the boots? The belt buckle big enough to deflect a bullet? The, uh, the tight jeans?”

“You wanna see me in a pair of tight jeans?” Benji asked, eyes sparking with amusement and grinning at Victor. Victor seriously wished that the earth would just open up and swallow him whole right at that moment and spare him the pain of living in a constant state of embarrassment.

“Uh, I, uh...”

Benji snorted. “Jeez, relax, Victor. I think your brain’s about to short circuit.” He wandered over to the rack and pulled out an absolutely hideous brown jacket, covered in suede tassels and enormous silver buttons, and pulled it on over his t-shirt. “How’s this? Do I rank above a five yet?”

They ended up wasting ten minutes hunting around for increasingly more ridiculous items, until they’d completed Benji’s outfit and the bearded guy at the counter was shooting them annoyed looks for being teenagers having fun. Clad in striped pants, lime green boots, the awful tasseled jacket and the Stetson, Benji looked less like a cowboy and more like a _(extremely attractive)_ rodeo clown. Benji struck a pose, sticking out one boot clad foot, his hands on his hips, and his hat tipped down low.

“Wanna take a photo for me? I can show all my friends back in Atlanta just how native I’ve gone,” Benji said, so Victor pulled out his phone and took a few pictures of him. “Let me see.” Benji pulled Victor over to him with a hand on his arm, leaning in to look at the photos on Victor’s phone. “What do you think, are any of them worthy of my Insta? As my super secret internet stalker, I could use your feedback.”

“Oh god,” Victor groaned, laughing but also kind of dying inside. “Please never call me that again.”

They spent the next hour trying on a bizarre collection of outfits, from velvet purple blazers to leather coats to a pale blue suit with a ruffled neck scarf thing that never should have survived past the eighties. Benji kept teasing him and making him try on weird stuff, but Victor didn’t really mind, and whenever they found something especially outrageous they’d mess around posing for more stupid photos. At one point Benji popped out of the changing room in a silky zebra striped shirt and started singing _“_ Livin’ on a Prayer” just to make Victor laugh, and Victor couldn’t resist grabbing a tennis racket to add some back up air guitar to the performance.

It was starting to get late and the guy at the counter looked like he was seriously considering throwing them out by the time they finally settled on some attractive clothes that they could actually wear to the dance. Benji stepped back into the changing room to get out of his suit and back into his regular clothes, while Victor waited for him. He heard a rustle of fabric and glanced up, his breath suddenly catching in his throat.

The curtain wasn’t quite closed all the way, allowing a narrow glimpse of Benji as he unbuttoned the dark blue shirt he’d been trying on and pulled it off. Victor’s mouth went dry at the sight of him, Benji reaching up to push his messy hair out of his face, his body lean and muscular and so perfect it made Victor feel light-headed just looking at him. Some part of his brain was shouting at him to turn away, both out of respect for Benji’s privacy and in order to avert the crisis of sexual confusion that seeing Benji topless was about to unleash upon him, but it was too late. The rest of his brain just did not care about anything other than taking in every single detail and filing it away for later.

It wasn’t until Benji had pulled his t-shirt back on and was about to turn and reach for the curtain that Victor finally forced himself to look away. His whole body felt hot and now he couldn’t look at Benji at all, too ashamed of the intense feelings that were threatening to overwhelm him.

“You ready to get going?” Benji asked him. Victor nodded, not really trusting himself to be able to speak just then.

They walked for a few minutes in a comfortable silence, back in the direction of Brasstown. The sun was finally starting to sink a little lower on the horizon, caught on the edges of the rooftops and tall oaks that surrounded the commons. Music drifted toward them from the concert space which was lit up now with strings of white lights that shone softly in the orangey glow of the sunset.

There was a paper for English that need to be turned in tomorrow, and some reading he had to do for his American History class, but Victor really didn’t want the evening to end yet. As they neared the edge of the commons, he found himself dreading the moment when he’d have to go back to being Normal Victor at home, to being the fixer, the one who cleaned up his parents’ messes and smiled even when he was hurting inside and who was just so depressingly fake.

Being with Benji felt completely different from all of that. When they were together it was like Victor’s walls couldn’t help but come crumbling down, and that should terrify him, but something about Benji made Victor forget to be afraid.

Across the street, a woman came on stage to a smattering of applause in a huge blonde wig and cowgirl outfit, pink and dotted all over with rhinestones, and started singing. Benji grabbed Victor’s arm in excitement.

“Oh my god,” Benji breathed, and Victor laughed a little in surprise.

“What? What’s happening?”

Benji started dragging him across the street toward the commons and Victor was happy to let himself be pulled along. “A Dolly Parton cover band, that’s what’s happening. There is no way we’re missing this.”

They worked their way past food stalls and vendors selling handmade crafts, into the small crowd in front of the stage. Benji had released Victor’s arm but Victor stayed close to him as they wove their way between the onlookers to find a spot with an unimpeded view of the Dolly impersonator. She was singing “Jolene”, one of the few songs Victor was familiar with, and the rhinestones were even more blindingly bright up close.

Victor watched in amazement as Benji sang the lyrics along with the other spectators near the front, and when 9 to 5 came on people broke out into dancing, Benji along with them, grinning and moving his body to the fast-paced beat of the music. He teased Victor, bumping into him repeatedly until Victor started to shuffle his feet around, too, his own laughter and the smile on Benji’s face quickly forcing him past whatever reservations he had about dancing in public.

“I never would’ve pegged you for a Dolly Parton stan,” Victor commented, when a catchy but somewhat slower love song started up next. He was a little breathless, from the dancing, from the sight of Benji moving with such ease, from the freedom of just being himself for a few minutes.

“Rude,” Benji said, shaking his head at Victor. “Dolly is timeless. She’s one of the few things gay sons and straight dads can agree on. Back in Georgia, me and my dad used to road trip to Dollywood like twice a year.”

“Seriously?

Benji nodded, but then looked away, his smile fading. “Yeah. We haven’t gone in a couple of years, though.”

Remembering some of what he knew had happened in the last year or so of Benji’s life – his accident, coming out, having a boyfriend – Victor asked, “Is everything okay with you guys?

“Me and my dad? Yeah, I mean, since I came out things have been different between us, but… we’re not estranged, at least.”

That familiar ache was back in his chest, the one Victor felt whenever he caught a glimpse of Benji hurting, whenever he himself thought of his father saying _“_ _That’s all we want, okay? For you to be happy_ _”_ or his mother telling him _“_ _We’re so proud of you”_. It was so hard, wondering where the limits of his parents’ love for him might lie.

“That’s really shitty.”

Benji caught his eye and it seemed like he was looking for something in Victor. He had no idea what Benji could see in his face just then, but Benji only nodded a little, said, “Yeah. Yeah, it is.”

“Have things been better for you lately? I mean, with all of that stuff you told me about...”

Sighing, Benji pushed a hand through his hair, a habit that Victor was beginning to realize meant that Benji was thinking about how to answer. “Well… it’s been a rough week, but yeah, things are getting better. To be honest the break up with Derek hasn’t been as difficult to get over as I thought it was going to be. I think maybe my pride was hurt worse than my heart, you know? The truth is that things were off with us for a long time. He made me feel bad about myself a lot, about the things I like to do, being a romantic… I realized I want to be with someone that doesn’t make me feel anxious all the time. Someone who makes me feel like I can just be myself and that’s enough.”

There was a long pause and it felt heavy with the weight of something left unsaid. Benji was looking at him so carefully, his hazel eyes almost golden in the reflection of the stage lights, and there was something there, a question maybe, something Victor wanted to respond to but didn’t know how.

No, that was a lie. He knew what he wanted to say, because it was crashing through his mind and heart and soul, demanding to be spoken. It was what he’d been feeling all night, messing around at the thrift store and working in perfect sync with Benji at Brasstown, and when they’d danced to Carly Rae, and when Victor had held him in his arms at the stoplight party.

_That’s how you make me feel. Like I can just be myself, and that’s enough._

But alongside the well of desire inside of him was an equally deep pit of shame and fear.

Benji’s eyes were still locked on his, and his mouth opened, like he was about to speak… and then he pressed his lips together into a small smile, looked away from Victor, back toward the stage. The lights shifted from blue to red to purple, washing Benji’s face in a myriad of soft, quiet shades of color, beautiful no matter the hue, no matter how long Victor stared.


	8. Homecoming

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: description of moderate violence/hate crime, use of a homophobic slur (the "f" word), description of a panic attack, internalized homophobia, homophobia
> 
> Hoo boy, this chapter is kind of a beast. I usually aim for 5k words per chapter, but there was a lot to get through with this one, so it is over 8K somehow... Also, I am REALLY not a fan of sports, so I hope you all appreciate the hour I spent researching the official rules of basketball on Wikipedia lol (If I screwed anything up feel free to let me know in the comments)

Friday morning Victor woke up early, a nervous tension buzzing inside him, as he opened his eyes and thought about the big game that night and the dance the following day. He showered and dressed quickly, then headed out to the kitchen to make breakfast for everyone, needing the distraction. As he passed through the living room, he was startled to hear a noise on the sofa, and looked over to see his father sleeping there, snoring softly.

He’d caught some of the argument the night before, rattling the walls and making Adrian beg him for a third bedtime story. It sounded like it’d been about money this time, about Isabel picking up more private lessons and Armando working late and it still not being enough, not when Isabel was sending money back to her mother in Puerto Rico every month and when Beau had gotten sick with colic over the summer, the vet’s bills piling up on top of all the regular household expenses.

Victor had been proud to pay his basketball fees himself, and when he continued to earn extra money from his job at Brasstown, he’d tried to offer some to his parents, but Armando had refused to accept it, telling Victor to think about his own future. _“You’re going to be applying to colleges before you know it,”_ Armando had told him.

Although Victor tried to be quiet as he went about starting the coffee maker and mixing eggs, Armando came trudging out to the kitchen a few minutes later, seating himself at the table with a sigh. Victor brought him a mug of coffee as soon as it was finished brewing.

_“_ _Gracias, mijo_ ,” Armando said, taking a long sip.

He leaned against the table beside his father for a minute, taking in the long lines of his face, the shadows under his eyes. “ _Papi_? Is everything okay?”

“I don’t know, Victor,” Armando admitted. A little spike of fear shot through Victor. The tension and constant bickering between his parents was the elephant in the room at their house, something everyone saw and felt and hated, but no one ever spoke about openly. The fact that his father was acknowledging it only increased his worry. “Your mom and I are just having a hard time right now. Money’s been tight lately and we’re trying to work out what to do about it. But leave it to us, okay? We’ll figure something out, we always do.”

Victor nodded, tempted to offer to chip in with his own savings again, but he had a feeling his father wouldn’t appreciate it. Armando wasn’t the most _machismo_ of guys, but he had his pride, and there were certain things that he was old-fashioned about. Victor knew that his father had never been very supportive of Isabel working, believing that a mother should stay at home and focus on her children like his own mother had, and he’d always tried to encourage Victor and Adrian to like the kinds of things he thought boys should like. It was why Victor had started playing basketball, because as a little kid his dad would take him out on the weekends to shoot hoops in the park with his cousins. He’d let Pilar join them, too, so it wasn’t entirely just a boy’s thing, but she’d quickly lost interest after she started doing gymnastics lessons and Armando had never really pushed her to pursue basketball as much as he did his boys.

Isabel came out to the kitchen then and went straight to the coffee maker, not stopping to give Armando a kiss like she did on their better mornings. She kissed Victor on the cheek instead, helping herself to a plate of the eggs and hashbrowns he’d made. “Thank you for breakfast, Victor. You ready for your big game tonight?”

Victor filled up his own plate and joined his parents at the table, feeling a little uncomfortable seated in between them while they sat at the far ends, as much space between them as they could make.

“Yep, I think so,” he answered. “We’ve been doing really good at practice lately, so I think we have a good chance of winning tonight.”

“That’s great!” Isabel said, smiling. “I’ll get to work on my new sign. What do you think about ‘There’s No Victory Without Victor’?”

“ _Mami, no_. Please, I am begging you.”

“What? I think it has a good ring to it.”

Victor was waiting outside for Felix to arrive (it was one of those rare occasions in which Felix _wasn’t_ fifteen minutes early) when a message popped up on his phone. It was from Simon.

_Victor, hey, is everything okay? I haven’t heard from you in a while, so I just wanted to check in._

_I’m sorry if I said anything in my last message that upset you. Just let me know that you’re all right, please?_

_Simon_

His stomach churned with guilt. He had wanted to reply, but every time he tried the words just kept coming out wrong, and then he didn’t want to think about it anymore. Everything inside of him felt so confused right now and it seemed impossible to explain it to another person. Spending most of the previous evening with Benji had only made those feelings more complicated, so that he was now beginning to seriously dread going to Homecoming on Saturday. He was supposed to be focusing on Mia, but how was he going to do that with Benji there, taking some new guy with him to the dance? The thought of seeing Benji with someone else… it left him feeling like he’d been stabbed in the gut.

It was hard to think of anything he could say to Simon, but he felt terrible just ignoring him, so he typed out a quick response.

_I’m sorry it took me so long to reply, I’ve just been busy lately. Tomorrow is Homecoming and I’m actually_ _taking_ _Mia._ _Th_ _ings are going really well between us right now._

_No need to worry about me. Everything is fine._

_Victor_

He wondered if the lie would be as obvious to Simon as it seemed to him.

The noise of the crowded gym died away as the door swung shut behind Victor and he walked outside to find Mia waiting for him. She was dressed in denim shorts and a green t-shirt, which matched his Brandon High School basketball uniform, and there were little green and gold stripes of face paint highlighting her cheekbones. She was looking at her phone when he approached, her brows furrowed, and she didn’t notice him right away.

“Hey there,” he said, and Mia looked up quickly, her frown melting away. “Everything okay?”

She sighed and stuffed her phone into her back pocket. “Yeah, just some family drama. It’s fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“I mean, it’s not a big deal. It’s, well, it’s just that my dad texted me about making sure I’d be free for brunch on Sunday. There’s some new girlfriend he wants me to meet, apparently, and I’m not exactly looking forward to it.”

“Oh, that sucks. I’m sorry.” Victor couldn’t imagine how awkward it would be to have a parent that was dating and bringing home new people. His own parents’ relationship was rocky, but he was grateful they were still together.

Mia rolled her eyes. “It’s okay, I’m used to it by now. Hopefully this one won’t be as crazy or annoying as the others. Um, but I didn’t come here to complain about my dad’s love life, sorry.”

“It’s all good. I didn’t know you were such a big basketball fan,” he said, nodding at her display of school spirit. Mia laughed.

“I’m really not. I, uh, have pretty much no idea how sports work. But Lake promised to sit next to me and explain everything, so hopefully I won’t be completely lost.”

Mia, one of the nicest and prettiest girls at his school, was there and all dressed up just to support him at the game. Victor couldn’t quite figure out how this had happened, but he was glad that it had. “It’s really cool that you’re here tonight,” he said. “I hope it won’t be too boring for you.”

A slow smile spread over Mia’s face as she looked him up and down. “I’m really not that into sports, but… I am definitely developing an appreciation for seeing you in this uniform.”

Victor ducked his head, blushing. He had no idea what to even say to that. How was he nearly sixteen and still so clueless about how to flirt with girls?

“So, are you ready to lead the team to victory?” Mia asked. “I hear you’re kind of the star player.”

“No, no, it’s definitely a group effort,” he protested.

“You’re pretty bad at accepting compliments, aren’t you?” Mia said, shaking her head at him a little. “Don’t worry, it’s actually really refreshing. There’s not a lot of guys like you, Victor.”

“Um, thanks?” There was a loud voice coming over the speakers inside, and Victor knew the game would be starting soon. “I’d better get back inside before Coach Harris thinks I’ve ditched and completely loses his mind.”

“Okay, well, break a leg, or good luck, or whatever it is that you athletic people say.”

He was about to step away and head back inside but then Mia was suddenly moving toward him, leaning up quickly to press her lips against his. Her mouth was soft and tasted a little sweet, the kiss lingering for one long moment before she pulled away.

A pleasant, tingling warmth spread over him, like sinking into a warm bath, and he smiled wide, so relieved to feel _something_ , something _good_ , because of Mia’s kiss. _This is real,_ he thought, _I can really do this. I can make this work and everything will finally go back to normal._

Already a couple minutes late for the team meeting, Victor and Mia exchanged slightly awkward goodbyes and he went back inside, hurrying to the locker room. Everyone else was there already, sitting on benches or leaning against their lockers while Coach Harris gave his usual strategy talk.

“Nice of you to finally join us, Salazar,” Coach said as Victor tried to slip in quietly. A few of the guys snickered.

Kieran, who was standing near Victor, elbowed him in the side. “Don’t be mad at Victor, Coach, he just had to get his pre-game game on with Mia Brooks.”

The room erupted in whistles and catcalls and Victor felt his face get hot from all the attention.

“All right, all right, settle down,” Coach shouted over the noise, and then dove back into his strategy-with-a-dash-of-pep-talk speech. It was nothing Victor hadn’t heard before, so he tuned it out a little while he got his feelings of embarrassment back under control. After he’d calmed down, he became aware of Andrew, who was sitting on the opposite side of the room, staring in Victor’s direction, eyes dark and arms crossed over his chest. Great, Andrew being pissed at him right before an important game was the last thing he needed.

Andrew wasted no time letting Victor know just how pissed he was, knocking his shoulder into Victor hard as they headed out to the court. Victor sucked in a sharp breath, rubbing his sore arm, and felt an answering fury bubble up inside him. He was tempted for a moment to catch up with Andrew and shove him back, but Victor was better than that. For all that he had a quick temper sometimes, he wasn’t the type of guy to resort to violence. He breathed deep, quashed his frustration, and moved forward to join his teammates.

The first quarter didn’t go too badly. Victor managed to score the first shot of the game, and kept their team ahead, although not with as big a margin as he would’ve liked. Part of the problem was that Andrew had apparently decided to forego some of the plays they’d been working on in favor of just ignoring Victor half the time and trying to make shots from less advantageous positions. It wasn’t quite obvious enough for everyone else to notice what Andrew was doing, but by the time the quarter ended, they were only ahead by four points.

“Come on, guys, let’s pick it up out there,” Coach Harris shouted as the second quarter began.

Up in the bleachers, there was a small but embarrassingly enthusiastic crowd rooting just for him, which included his parents, Pilar, and Adrian, as well as Felix, Feña, Lake, and Mia. Isabel’s new sign was as huge and cheesy as always, the letters spelling out his name covered in gold glitter and outlined with bright green, reflecting brightly in the fluorescent lighting of the gym. Adrian looked adorable in Victor’s spare jersey, which was so long on him it went past the knees. Lake and Mia were sitting a few people down from his family, but close enough that it had him wondering if his mom and Mia had run into each other yet. He hoped not; he wasn’t sure how their first meeting would go. His mom was definitely excited about Mia, but she also had a tendency to be extremely overprotective at times.

The next two quarters went by similarly to the first, Victor scoring just enough shots to keep them in the lead but not by much. As they entered the final quarter, Coach Harris’ face was red from shouting and he’d sweated through his t-shirt. He slapped Victor on the back as he moved towards the court to resume game play.

“All right, Salazar, you got this! Get me that win!”

It seemed like Andrew was finally getting his head back in the game and focusing on winning now, because he was passing the ball to Victor more frequently and they had a strong lead at last. But then, when one of the other players fouled and Victor went to take the free throw, his little crowd of friends and family went wild shouting their encouragement, including Mia.

“Let’s go, Victor!” she called out, and he looked over at her for just a moment to catch her eyes and smile.

He made the shot, earning them another point, and then play continued. Matt tossed the ball toward Andrew, who was near the other team’s hoop, but it was intercepted by one of the opposing players. The guy started looking around, trying to figure out which of his teammates to pass to, but Andrew was blocking him effectively, using his superior height to catch the ball easily out of midair when the other guy attempted to pass. Victor cut in, ready to receive the ball and make a shot, but that dark look flashed over Andrew’s face again when Victor moved close to him, and rather than passing, he jumped up and tried to take the shot himself.

The other player was still right there in Andrew’s space, blocking him, so Andrew had to twist slightly to get out of the range of the other guy’s arms, which meant that when he landed, he was farther to the right than before and came crashing down into Victor.

Victor was falling before he even knew what was happening, his hand shooting out to try and catch himself, and he landed hard on his right wrist. Pain lanced through him, his head, shoulder and knee all colliding with the wood floor with a loud thud. Rolling to the side, Victor cradled his injured wrist to his chest and lay on his back, eyes squeezed shut, just trying to breathe through it.

_“_ _Shit_ ,” Andrew swore emphatically, and even the guy from the other team was hovering over Victor, a look of concern on his face when Victor opened his eyes. Coach Harris rushed over to them and carefully helped Victor to sit up.

“Shit, Victor, I-” Andrew started to say, but he was cut off by the arrival of Victor’s parents and teammates, everyone crowding around to see if he was okay and all trying to talk over each other.

“Victor, are you all right?” his mother exclaimed, already trying to pull him into a hug.

“Did you hit your head?” Armando asked.

Coach Harris leaned into his space as well, saying, “Let’s take a look at that wrist.”

Victor could already feel it swelling up, throbbing painfully with each beat of his heart. His head was aching, too, and he cautiously probed at it with his fingers while he held out his wrist for Coach to inspect. There was a small bump on the back of his scalp, tender when he touched it, but it didn’t seem too bad.

The school nurse showed up then with a first aid kit and forced everyone out of the way. After a few minutes of examination, it was determined that Victor most likely didn’t have a concussion, but that he would need to go to the hospital to make sure his wrist hadn’t been broken.

Victor followed his parents off the court to where his siblings and friends were all waiting for him with looks of concern on their faces. The game resumed play with one of his teammates substituting for him, and there were only about four minutes left on the clock so Victor felt reassured that with the lead he’d earned them they should still be able to win.

When he reached them, Mia was one of the first to lean forward and give him a hug, her arms wrapping around his neck, and the warmth of her body, the sweet smell of her, eased some of the tension that was lingering inside of him.

“Are you okay?” she asked, pulling back but keeping her hands on his shoulders. Victor was aware of everyone’s eyes on them, especially his parents. Armando was smiling in that way that meant he was feeling proud and it was the first time Victor had seen him smile in days. Beside him, Isabel was looking at Mia like she was sizing her up and just maybe seeing something she liked.

“I’ll be fine. The nurse thinks it’s just a sprain, so hopefully I won’t end up missing too much of the season.”

“That is such a major bummer,” Felix said, mouth twisted sympathetically. “You’re going to go get it checked out, right?”

“Yes,” Isabel said, “We’re headed straight to the E.R. to make sure it’s not a fracture. Felix, I hate to bother you, but do you think you could give Pilar and Adrian a ride home?”

“Absolutely. Anything I can do to help, Mrs. Salazar.”

She rolled her eyes. “Felix, you are practically my third son at this point, how many times do I have to remind you to call me Isabel?” She turned to Mia then. “So, you must be this Mia we’ve been hearing so much about.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Mia said, pushing her hair back nervously. “It’s really nice to meet you both.”

Armando nodded, that rare smile still there, and Victor could only remember how tired his father had looked after waking up on the couch that morning, and feel grateful. “It’s a shame we’re meeting like this. We’ll have to have you over sometime so we can all get to know each other better.”

“I’d really like that,” Mia said.

Adrian squeezed past the adults and wrapped his arms around Victor’s legs. “Are you okay, Victor?”

“Yeah, buddy, I’m fine. Just banged my wrist a little, but we’re gonna go let the doctors look at it and I’ll be right home after that.”

Adrian nodded, and then held out his Olaf plushie. “Wanna take Olaf with you to keep you company?”

There was no way Victor was going to walk into a hospital carrying a stuffed animal for emotional support, but he took the doll anyway, and ruffled Adrian’s hair. If Olaf stayed in the car when they went inside, it’s not like Adrian would ever know.

“Thanks, _hermano_.”

At the hospital, an x-ray of his wrist confirmed that it was just sprained, not broken, and the doctor assured him that as long as he had a check up in a few weeks and everything looked okay, he’d probably be good to get back to playing basketball after that. Victor was relieved; even with Andrew being a dick lately, basketball was one of the few things left in his life that didn’t feel complicated and messy and confusing, and the thought of missing more of the season than he had to was really depressing. A nurse wrapped his wrist up in a tight brace and gave him some instructions for making sure it healed properly, and then they were finally able to head home.

The car ride both to and from the hospital had been uncomfortable, and not just because of the pain Victor was in from his injuries. His parents had spoken to him, about the game and about how nice Mia seemed, but not a single word to each other, and the silence between them felt heavy enough to crush them all beneath its weight. It was a huge relief to pull into their driveway at last.

He tucked Olaf in under the covers with Adrian and slipped off to bed himself, not waiting to see where his father would end up sleeping that night. He hoped that his parents would talk things out, but he didn’t feel overly optimistic about that happening.

Tomorrow was the dance, and there was so much on Victor’s mind. Everything flashed through his head like some terrible movie montage, set to the soundtrack of anxiety that was buzzing inside of him. There were Andrew’s eyes boring into his, dark with jealousy; Mia’s lips pressing a kiss against his own, so soft and sweet; his father’s face, lined with exhaustion; Simon’s words, heavy with concern; his mother working for hours to make a sign that represented all of the love she had for him; his _abuelos_ so excited to finally meet a girl he was dating; all of the approving smiles and nods and slaps on the back and pride from his family, his friends, his teammates, even random people at school, all reminding him that it was Mia who should be on his arm at the dance tomorrow, even though, deep down, some part of him acknowledged that she wasn’t the one he dreamed about at night. And there was Benji’s body, twisting as he danced without hesitation; Benji’s head a wonderful weight on his shoulder; Benji’s voice, singing like it came as naturally to him as breathing; Benji exposed by the half-open curtain, strong arms and broad shoulders and muscular chest everything Victor ached to touch; everything about Benji inspiring in him a want like he’d never experienced before, so strong it was terrifying, so natural it felt right even when the rest of the world seemed to be telling him it was wrong.

Victor felt so lost. He didn’t know what to believe anymore.

“Wow… You actually don’t look half bad.”

Victor turned away from the bathroom mirror, where he’d been styling his hair, and took in Pilar. She was leaning against the doorway, wearing a black dress with a dark skirt that shimmered in the light, and he didn’t think he’d ever seen his little sister look so grown up.

“You don’t look too bad yourself,” he said, and for just a moment they stood there basking in the warmth of family bonding.

That is until Pilar forced her way past him into the bathroom and started to shove him out the door. “Okay, okay, now get the hell out so I can finish getting ready.”

He rolled his eyes as the door slammed shut behind him, and went out to the living room. Isabel was just letting Felix inside, exclaiming over how handsome he looked in his striped suit and blue bow tie. She turned around to look at Victor as he joined them, her eyes tearing up.

_“_ _Mami_ , come on, don’t get all weepy on us,” he protested, but let her wrap him up in a hug so tight it left his ribs aching just a bit. She hugged Felix, too, who grinned at Victor over her shoulder.

“I just can’t believe how fast you all are growing up. What happened to the little boys that used to run around here leaving Legos all over the place and driving me crazy?”

“Pretty sure there are Legos in the hallway right now, courtesy of Adrian,” Victor said. “I have bruises on the bottom of my foot as evidence.”

“So, Felix, I hope this is okay. Maybe I shouldn’t have assumed, but I know that Lisa hasn’t been feeling up to much lately, so…” his mother trailed off, looking uncharacteristically nervous. They followed her out to the dining room where not one but two enormous corsages were spread out across the table. At the top of each was an intricate paper mum, white and surrounded by a nest of feathers and silver and blue streamers, which flowed down into a cascade of ribbons.

Felix looked suddenly just as choked up as Isabel was, and Victor almost felt like the third wheel as he watched his mother and best friend hug again.

“Thank you so much, Isabel,” Felix said. Victor could probably count on one hand the number of times over the years that Felix had called his mother by her first name.

When Felix stepped back, he wrapped an arm around his mom and squeezed her against his side. “Thanks, _Mami_. They’re really beautiful. I’m sure the girls will love them.”

Victor and Felix climbed into Felix’s old Honda and headed out to pick up their dates. They stopped at Wendy’s house first, which turned out to be a good ways out of town, a sprawling ranch style home surrounded by fields full of long horn cattle, and Wendy ran up to the car in a teal dress and jumped inside before Felix even had the chance to try and open the door for her.

“Drive!” Wendy shouted, and Felix, startled, began backing up the car automatically. “If my parents see us we’ll be posing for photos until we’re eighty.”

“Pretty sure that’s what’s going to happen as soon as we get back to my house,” Victor warned her.

“As long as it’s not my own parents acting gross and embarrassing, it’s fine,” Wendy said as she straightened her skirt and hair in the backseat.

“You look really great,” Felix told her, shooting her a warm smile in the rear view mirror. Wendy beamed.

“Thanks, Felix. I make my own eyeshadow, out of dehydrated beets.”

Victor would not have known what to say to that, but Felix’s face lit up. “Really? That’s amazing. I make my own conditioner out of coconut oil!”

Maybe Lake turning Felix down wasn’t such a bad thing after all, Victor mused, as the two of them chattered enthusiastically about homemade bath products all the way to Mia’s house. It was nice to see a girl who actually seemed to appreciate Felix’s eccentric ways.

When they arrived at Mia’s, Victor was greeted at the door by a man that he could only assume was Mia’s father.

“You must be Victor,” he said, extending a hand to shake Victor’s. He was tall and very well dressed, wearing a button up shirt that looked like it was probably some fancy designer brand. “I’ve been hearing a lot about you lately.”

“It’s really nice to meet you, sir,” Victor said, and Mia’s dad smiled approvingly.

“I hope it won’t be necessary to remind you that I expect to have my daughter home at a reasonable time this evening.”

“Dad!” Mia’s voice came from behind her father, and he moved aside, revealing Mia standing there in a form fitting, sequined silver dress that looked stunning on her. “Stop being so old fashioned. Are we living in the 1950’s?”

“What, I can’t look out for my little girl anymore?”

Mia rolled her eyes, but there was a smile on her face when she turned her gaze to Victor.

“You look beautiful,” he said, and he meant it. He’d never seen a girl as beautiful as Mia.

Mia ducked her head, pleased. “Thanks. You look really nice, too.”

Victor smoothed his hands over the black blazer with tiny white dots that he’d purchased from the thrift store, and hoped it wasn’t obvious that his clothes were second hand. It was a little intimidating, standing there in front of Mia’s magazine-worthy house with her and her father dressed so elegantly and knowing where his own suit had come from, knowing that he was picking her up in a beat up old Honda from the nineties that wasn’t even his.

The way Mia was looking at him, though, like he was everything she’d been hoping for, settled some of the nervous tension building inside him. She liked him, and he found her so beautiful, and everything was going to work out fine.

After picking up Mia, they returned to the Salazar house, which they’d been strictly instructed to do by Isabel, who wanted to be there when the girls received their corsages. Pilar’s boyfriend, Eric, (who Victor had to admit did look a bit like Kristoff from _Frozen_ ), had arrived with a gigantic hot pink corsage decorated with hearts and teddy bears. Pilar gaped at him when she saw it and didn’t move or speak for a full thirty seconds.

“I’m so sorry, babe.” Eric winced, his fair skin going red. “I tried to tell my mom that you’re not exactly into girly stuff, but once she gets an idea in her head there’s literally no stopping her.”

Pilar accepted the corsage carefully, not looking at anyone, and it was hard not to feel amused by the way she was simultaneously grimacing and blushing. If anyone but Eric had tried to give her that corsage, Victor was pretty sure she’d have strangled them with it.

Mia looked genuinely touched when Victor handed her the corsage his mother had put so much work into. “This is so beautiful,” she breathed, running her hand lightly over the cascade of ribbons. She looked up at Isabel, and there seemed to be a moment of understanding that passed between them, like maybe his mother was forgiving Mia for the trouble with the party last weekend, like the way Mia touched the corsage, the way Mia had held his hand when he brought her into his home, the way she’d held him with so much concern after he’d been injured last night, was enough to meet Isabel’s approval.

Victor’s prediction about photos turned out to be one hundred percent accurate. His mother insisted on pictures of all the guys, of Victor and Pilar, Victor and Felix, all the girls with and without corsages, shots of each couple on their own, a few pictures of Adrian just because he was adorable, and then finally all of the couples lined up together.

“I cannot believe how cute you all look!” Isabel gushed, waving her hand at Pilar to get her to move in a little closer. “Mia, that dress is giving me _life_.”

Mia, who was standing in front of him while he held his hands lightly on her hips, smiled and said, “Thanks, Mrs. Salazar.”

“Please, call me Isabel,” his mother corrected, and Victor felt a tension he didn’t know he was holding onto disappear. His mom seemed to be really beginning to like Mia. Isabel had taken awhile to come around to Eric, so he’d been a little worried to see if she’d approve of Mia or not. The fact that Isabel had seemed to approve of her so quickly, even in spite of the stoplight party mess, had Victor feeling a confusing mix of relief and guilt.

“Okay, _Mami_ , that’s enough,” Pilar said, shifting uncomfortably in her heels. “This dance is going to be over before we even get there.”

“All right, all right, have fun, _mis amores_.”

About twenty minutes later they all arrived at the school gym, which had been transformed over night. The bleachers were gone, the basketball hoops raised up and away, and the whole space had been decorated according to what Victor guessed was some kind of country chic theme. There were large white lights strung up everywhere, a stage with a DJ booth set up, and bundles of hay and big baskets of mums filled in the corners of the room. Some tables and chairs were scattered around, with tall lanterns surrounded by flowers and Indian Corn as centerpieces. When they entered, he spotted Benji seated at one of the tables, and as Victor watched a tall guy with light skin and a head of dark curls approached Benji, carrying two cups and offering Benji one of them. The guy took a seat in a chair pushed close to Benji’s, close enough that their knees must have been touching, and Victor had to swallow past the lump forming in his throat and force himself to look away.

“Mia, Victor! Oh my god, you both look amazing,” Lake squealed, appearing suddenly and startling Victor out of his momentary distraction. Kieran was behind her, being weirdly silent for a guy that usually couldn’t stop talking. “I still can’t believe how perfect that dress is on you.”

“Hey, you, too,” Mia said, giving Lake a little hug. “You look gorgeous.”

Felix and Wendy were just behind them coming into the gym, and mid conversation about- well, something Victor didn’t really get but seemed to be related to old movies maybe?

“Don’t get me wrong,” Felix was saying to Wendy, so absorbed in his discussion that he hadn’t noticed Lake yet, who had just tensed up, “I mean, Kurosawa was a genius, and like, _Throne of Blood_ is totally a classic, but as far as really creative adaptations of the bard’s writing goes, is there anything more out there than _Forbidden Planet_?”

“Well, actually-” Wendy began.

“Whoah, Kieran, watch it with the hands!” Lake suddenly burst out, surprising everyone, including Kieran, whose hand was just lightly resting on Lake’s shoulder. Lake laughed unconvincingly. “All about the PDA, this guy.”

There was a long, awkward moment when Lake and Felix stared each other down, no one saying anything, and Victor seriously wished the two of them would just get over whatever the hell this weird thing between them was.

“Oh look, there’s Benji,” Mia said, clearly desperate to get away from Lake and Felix, “and that must be his date. Let’s go say hi.”

Lake perked up at that, finally breaking eye contact with Felix. “Oooh, he’s _cute_. God those two look good together, don’t they?”

Mia rolled her eyes, and Victor tried hard to ignore the way his heart was aching painfully in his chest, the way he felt like he was going to be sick just looking at Benji and his date. They were leaning into each other, the other guy saying something close to Benji’s ear that made them both laugh. The last thing Victor wanted was to go over there and see them flirting up close, but Mia’s hand in his was pulling him that direction and with a sense of dread he let himself be tugged along.

Benji looked up at them as they walked over, his smile from a moment ago growing smaller. “Hey guys,” he said. He gestured at his date. “This is Adam. Adam, these are my friends, Mia, Victor, and Lake, and uh...”

“Kieran,” Kieran supplied, still hovering behind Lake and being unusually quiet. He seemed to have been stunned into obedience by Lake’s forceful personality. Victor was hoping the effect would last awhile. It was refreshing to be around Kieran without being constantly bombarded by dumb jokes.

“Nice to meet you,” Mia said to Adam.

Lake took a seat at the table, and then turned to Kieran, ordering, “Go get us some punch, sweetie.”

“Oh, uh, okay.”

Adam stood up. “I could use a refill, so why don’t I help you grab them.”

Not sure whether he should go with the other guys, Victor hesitated for a moment, but eventually took a seat next to Mia at the table. Now that Adam was gone, it didn’t feel so impossible to be sitting here near Benji, but it was still uncomfortable. Whenever he was around Benji it always felt like his mask was slipping. It was incredibly freeing when it was just the two of them, but here with Mia beside him it had him on edge.

“Okay, tell us everything,” Lake said, leaning forward over the table and staring intensely at Benji. “Who is this mystery hunk and where did you find him?”

Benji let out a little laugh, and his eyes flicked up to meet Victor’s for just a split second before turning back to Lake. “Uh, well, he’s a freshman at Brandon College, actually. We’ve just been chatting online, we hadn’t even met in person until this afternoon when we got coffee before the dance. This is pretty weird, for a first date, right?”

“No way, this is perfect.” Lake looked over at Adam at the drinks table and waggled her brows. “Now you don’t have to wait for some special occasion to find out just how delish he looks in a suit. And can I just say, you have great taste? I mean, look at those curls...”

Benji nodded, said a little quietly, “Yeah. Yeah, I guess he is pretty cute.”

Victor stared down at the table, his hands curling into fists against his thighs.

“So what is he studying?” Mia asked.

“Um, music composition. He plays piano and violin, apparently.”

“Oh, that’s great,” Mia said. “You guys must have so much in common.”

Mia’s hand was resting on his knee, her slender fingers warm even through the fabric, and although her touch usually felt nice, at the moment Victor wanted to just get as far away from Mia and Benji and _Adam_ as he possibly could. That closed in, too-tight feeling was creeping up on him again, each breath coming faster than the last.

Adam and Kieran returned with punch for everyone, and Adam put an arm on the back of Benji’s chair as he sat down. He handed Benji a cup, and then reached up to push a strand of Benji’s hair out of his face, his fingers definitely lingering as he did so. “Sorry,” Adam said. Victor thought uncharitably that Adam didn’t really look very sorry about having to touch Benji. “It just seemed like it was about to get in your eyes.”

“Ugh, can you guys like tone it down a little?” Kieran complained, looking between Benji and Adam with a sour expression on his face. Both Benji and Adam froze, their bodies visibly tensing up.

Lake whirled around to glare at her date. “What the fuck, Kieran? You can’t talk to them like that.”

Kieran raised his hands up in front of his chest defensively. “Whoah, chill, I don’t care that they’re gay. I just, like, don’t want them all up in my face about it...”

“Okay, you know what? Why don’t you go fuck off to the neanderthal jock table – no offense, Victor – and stop ruining our night?”

“Come on, Lake, I didn’t-”

“ _Now_ , Kieran. Get lost.”

Kieran shoved his chair back with a loud scrape and stormed away from their table. As soon as he was gone, Lake leaned over to put a hand on Benji’s arm.

“I am so sorry, Benji,” she said, and Benji just smiled tightly.

“It’s okay, Lake, it’s not your fault he turned out to be an ass.”

Adam pushed a hand through his dark hair with a sigh, and then forced a smile as he turned to Benji. “Hey, why don’t we just forget that ever happened and go dance?”

Benji hesitated, his shoulders still tense, but after a moment he nodded. “Okay, yeah. I’d like that.”

Adam stood up, holding out a hand to help Benji to his feet, and then led them out to the dance floor. Some people nearby were staring at them, with expressions ranging from curious to hostile, and the tidal wave of anxiety that had been building in Victor throughout the entire exchange with Kieran finally came crashing down on him. He couldn’t stay here, watching Benji with another guy, watching the way his classmates were staring at them, some of them with disgust. Victor had to get out of there. He didn’t want to know if someone else would say something hateful and cruel. He didn’t want to know how Benji’s body looked, dancing close to Adam’s.

“Hey, uh, I’m just gonna hit the bathroom real quick,” he told Mia, and rushed away before she had a chance to reply.

The bathroom appeared to be empty, and Victor rested gratefully against the counter, his hands on either side of a sink, his head hung low, soaking up the quiet. It was hard to catch his breath at first, his head spinning, his limbs shaking with nervous energy. When he’d managed to calm down enough to just breathe normally again, he turned on the faucet, splashing some cool water against his face. The physical sensation helped to bring him back to himself. He could feel the water on his skin, the smooth counter top under his fingers, he could hear the sound of a door opening…

He looked up in surprise and caught Andrew stepping out of one of the stalls, their eyes meeting in the mirror. Andrew walked over to the sink next to Victor, washing his hands in silence. Victor wondered if there was anything in his face that would give away the panic he’d been feeling.

“How’s the wrist?” Andrew asked, nodding at it. He grabbed a paper towel, dried his hands.

“Uh, it’s fine. Just a sprain apparently.”

“Oh, cool. That’s good.” Andrew turned to face him and Victor was surprised at the remorse he saw in Andrew’s eyes. “Look, Victor, I messed up yesterday. I was acting like a total dick at the game, and it’s my fault you got hurt.”

It was true, but it was also kind of an accident. Victor shrugged. “It’s okay...”

“No, it’s really not. I’m sorry, all right? I just… I was so jealous, of you and Mia, and I let it get to my head.” Andrew’s jaw clenched, and Victor could tell that it was really hard for him to say what came next. “She picked _you_. Whether I like it or not, I have to respect that. So I’ll leave you alone from now on.”

God. What could Victor say to that? A bitterness rose up inside of him that he recognized as guilt. It was familiar; he’d been feeling it too much lately. He liked Mia, a lot, but was it enough? And here was this guy who was clearly crazy about her and Victor was getting in his way. Andrew probably didn’t feel confused about his feelings for Mia. He probably wouldn’t have to give himself pep talks just to touch her, just to convince himself that what he was feeling was real. There was pain in Andrew’s face, and in some way Victor wondered if he wasn’t a little bit responsible for it.

But Mia _had_ chosen him, not Andrew. And he wanted things to work out with her, he wanted it so bad he was desperate for it. He couldn’t let this chance at a normal life slip away from him.

“Hey,” Victor said, as Andrew began to walk away, “thanks. Um, for apologizing. It was really cool of you.”

Andrew just stared at him for a long moment without saying anything, like all of his grace had been used up. He gave Victor a tiny nod and walked out of the room.

Mia was standing alone, sipping her punch, near the side of the room. _Waiting for me,_ Victor realized, and the guilt that was already eating at him intensified that little bit more. He took a deep breath, resolving to shove away all the fear and stress and _(jealousy)_ and confusion, until there was nothing left for him to focus on but Mia and making this night perfect for her.

He walked up to her, held a hand out, and hoped that his smile would reach his eyes. “Wanna dance?”

Mia’s frown transformed into something soft as she took his hand and let him lead her out onto the dance floor. The song playing was something slow and sweet, so he drew her close to him, hands on the curve of her hips, her arms coming up to rest behind his neck. They looked into each other’s eyes and there was definitely _something_ there, some flutter of butterfly wings in his stomach. Without allowing himself any more time to overthink it, to second guess or panic, he leaned down and pressed his lips to hers.

It was the second time they’d kissed in as many days, and just like the night before Victor felt overcome with relief at how nice it was to kiss her. He wasn’t broken, after all, he could kiss a girl and feel something, feel those butterflies that everyone talked about. She tasted like vanilla and she smelled sweet, too, like something that reminded him of spring. The touch of their mouths was so gentle and slow, lips brushing lightly.

He pulled away, smiling shyly at Mia, and she leaned in closer to rest her head against his chest while they swayed to the music. Everything about the moment seemed to be perfect: the golden lights overhead, the slow beat of the song, the warm press of Mia’s body against his, the fact that he had kissed her and it had been good. The panic he’d experienced just a short while ago in the bathroom felt worlds away now. For the first time in so long, Victor felt hopeful.

“I really like you, Victor,” Mia whispered.

He held her a little closer. “Me, too. I mean, I like you, too.”

At least two more quiet songs passed by as they danced just like that, not talking, just holding onto each other. It was so comfortable being with Mia, he felt like he could have stayed like that for the rest of the night, but eventually a more upbeat song came on and they pulled away from each other. Mia began moving to the much faster beat, twisting and swinging her hips just a little, and then Lake drifted over, and Felix and Wendy were nearby as well, and Matt and his date, and soon all of them were dancing in a big group. Victor couldn’t help noticing the way Felix’s eyes kept snagging on Lake despite his friend’s best efforts to stay focused on Wendy, and whenever Felix looked away Lake would shoot him covert glances of her own.

For a few minutes, it was really fun. Mia and Lake were twirling each other around and laughing, and Matt was attempting some John Travolta style moves that had his date doubled over giggling, and then not to be outdone Felix tried to grab Victor and dip him, except that Victor tensed up in shock and they both went careening into Matt and nearly ended up on the floor. Victor was shoving at Felix playfully and trying to catch his breath past all the laughter, when a shout suddenly cut through the noise of the crowd.

“ _I said_ , get the fuck out of here, faggots!”

In an instant, Victor’s heart felt like it had turned to ice in his chest. He froze, whole body tense and ready to fight, to run, to hide. His eyes scanned the room, looking for the source of the voice, and widened in horror at the scene before him.

Adam was on the floor, his expression caught somewhere between anger and fear, brushing himself off as Benji bent down to give him a hand and help him back to his feet. As soon as Adam was standing, Benji whipped around, and there was no confusing the emotion on his face, not with the way it was so twisted in fury. Benji flew forward, shoving hard at Tom Davis despite the fact that Tom was at least a head taller than Benji. Tom stumbled back a step but didn’t lose his balance, righting himself and moving in dangerously close to Benji who didn’t have the sense to back off from a guy that was easily twice his size. Victor didn’t know Tom well, but everyone knew that Tom was the running back on the football team and had a reputation for being a jerk.

“What did you call us?” Benji yelled. Tom was right there in Benji’s face, sneering at him, and Benji’s hands came up to shove him back again, but they didn’t manage to connect very forcefully that time.

Everything happened so fast. Tom’s fist drew back. Out of the corner of his eye, Victor could see a teacher rushing toward them, and his own friends frozen in shock and horror around him, and suddenly he was moving forward, his fight or flight response shocking him out of his paralysis and sending him right toward the thick of things. He reached out toward Tom’s arm, but he didn’t make it in time.

The punch landed, crashing into the side of Benji’s face, and he would’ve fallen if Adam hadn’t caught him.

Just as suddenly, the fight was over. Adam was holding Benji, stopping him from going after Tom, and the teacher, Mr. Collins, cut through the crowd to grab Tom by the arm and restrain him. The formerly silent crowd of onlookers erupted into noise all around them. Victor found himself standing in front of Benji and Adam, unable to tear his eyes away from a trickle of blood streaming from the split skin on Benji’s cheekbone.

“Benji,” Victor called out. His heart was pounding so hard it was practically deafening, adrenaline propelling him forward. Without realizing it he had his hand on Benji’s arm and their eyes were locked on each other. “God, Benji… Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Benji said, but he was trembling, and it was so obvious that he wasn’t remotely okay, and Victor had no idea what to do. He desperately wanted to pull Benji into a hug, but Adam still had an arm around Benji’s shoulders and Benji was leaning back against him. Adam, who was Benji’s date, and who was glancing between the two of them with a look on his face that Victor was too shaken to examine closely. Victor’s hand was still on Benji’s upper arm and he knew he should pull it away but he just couldn’t let go. Not when Benji was hurt and bleeding right there in front of him. Not when the ugliness of Tom’s words was still echoing through everyone’s minds.

“I’m fine,” Benji said more firmly, finally taking a step to the side and away from both Adam and Victor, Victor watching helplessly as his hand fell away from Benji’s arm. Their Chemistry teacher, Ms. Thomas appeared then with the school nurse, and together they led Benji away, with Adam trailing behind them.

And then Victor was standing there staring after them stupidly and like someone had flipped a switch the noise of the room, the closeness of the crowd around him came slamming into him with crushing force. The panic he’d felt earlier in the evening had returned stronger and more horrible than ever, squeezing his lungs so tight he couldn’t get in a single breath. The edges of his vision were quickly filling up with shadows that were threatening to submerge everything around him in darkness.

Mia’s voice was calling him. He could make it out faintly, through the fog in his mind. “Victor? Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” he heard himself say in a strange voice that didn’t sound like it belonged to him. How was he speaking? He couldn’t even breathe. He had to get out of there, he had to get out _now_ … “I’m just gonna go get some air. I’ll be right back.”

He couldn’t look at Mia, or wait for her response. There was no time. He had to get outside so that he could breathe again. Rushing past the crowd, Victor slammed through the gym door and out into the dimly lit parking lot.

An unknown amount of time passed before Victor came back to himself. When he did, he found that he was sitting on the curb near Felix’s car, head buried in his hands, just breathing in and out, in and out, so slowly and carefully. The floating feeling began to fade away at last. The heat of the evening air crept in first, cloying, making his suit stick uncomfortably to his limbs, and then he grew aware of the rough concrete under his legs, and heard the muffled, distant sound of music and voices.

It took him a long while to realize he wasn’t alone.

“Victor.”

It was Pilar. She was standing near the trunk of the car and her voice sounded weird. _Scared_ , Victor realized. _She’s scared._ And not just scared, but upset, too, judging by the way her make up was smeared around her puffy eyes. She’d been crying. Was it because of him?

“Victor,” Pilar repeated, in that small voice, “what’s wrong with you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry not sorry for the cliffhanger haha  
> Don't worry, I won't leave you guys hanging too long. The next chapter will be up very soon.


	9. Maybe I Don't Want Heaven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: internalized homophobia, non-explicit discussion of a hate crime
> 
> Credit for the chapter title goes to Troye Sivan, of course.

“Victor,” Pilar repeated, in that small voice, “what’s wrong with you?”

It felt like time was standing still. Victor stared up at his sister from where he sat on the curb and she stared back at him from a few feet away. It was dark, the shadow cast by Felix’s car blocking out the streetlight overhead. Even through the shadows he could see that Pilar wasn’t okay. She looked just as broken as he felt, her hair a little disheveled, her eyes red and lined with the black smears of her makeup, her hands shaking just slightly.

It was hard to cut through the post-panic haze and find an answer to Pilar’s question. It would be hard to answer that particular question at any moment, never mind just then. What _was_ wrong with him? Was he the only one who fell apart like this? Whose lungs just couldn’t seem to draw air when the room was too small, the voices too loud?

“I-” he started, and swallowed hard, tried again, “I don’t know.”

Pilar’s lower lip trembled, her dark eyes glittering with tears on the edge of falling. It was so strange to see her cry, it made him feel afraid, too.

“I’ve never seen you look like that before,” Pilar whispered. “You looked like you… I don’t know, like you weren’t even here, like you couldn’t hear anything I was saying to you.”

He stared down at the broken asphalt underfoot, tracing the cracks with his eyes, the places where little stems of grass had worked their way through the hard rock. He felt an urge to pull out those weeds, to somehow fill in the gaps.

The clacking of Pilar’s shoes against the ground warned him of her approach, but as much as he wanted to, he didn’t try to run away. She sat down beside him on the curb, and then her arm was winding around his shoulders, pulling him in to lean against her side. That little act of kindness made him feel like his heart was breaking, like if he wasn’t careful he might start crying and never stop. He wrapped an arm around Pilar’s back as well, and for a few minutes they just sat there together in the dark.

Pilar sniffed, and it took him a moment to realize that there were tears running down her cheeks. Her back shook beneath his arm and she reached up to roughly brush the moisture away.

“Pilar, what’s going on? Are you okay?” he asked. “What were you doing out here?”

Pilar’s voice was flat in a way that Victor recognized as the calm before the storm of her anger broke. “I came outside looking for Eric. And I found him. With Kate. They were sitting on one of the benches over there, making out. They didn’t even see me at first.”

“Oh god, Pilar, I’m so sorry.”

“I should’ve known. He’s been acting so weird lately, taking forever to reply to my texts, saying he’s too busy to hang out with me. He’s probably been with her this whole time.” Pilar’s hands clenched, gripping fistfuls of the delicate fabric of her skirt, like she wanted to tear it all to pieces. “I’m such an idiot.”

Victor pulled his sister in tighter against him, wishing he could just wrap her up in a real hug, but knowing that Pilar wouldn’t like to feel like he was coddling her.

“No, you’re not. They’re the idiots, for betraying you like that. You shouldn’t even waste a second of your time beating yourself up over him.”

They descended into silence again for awhile, but it was easier this time, both of them taking comfort in the quiet, in each other’s company. He wanted it to last forever, but he knew it wouldn’t. Eventually Pilar would remember what she’d seen, him falling apart in a parking lot at night when he should’ve been inside having fun with his date, and she’d want answers. And somewhere back inside the gym he knew that Mia was waiting for him, probably disappointed that he’d disappeared again, probably wondering where he’d gone.

Sure enough, Pilar broke the silence a few minutes later. “Did something happen tonight?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come on, Victor, don’t play stupid. You really freaked me out earlier.” She shifted away from him, scooting back out of their half-embrace. “You know I tried to get your attention for like five minutes? I called your name a bunch of times, and you didn’t even hear me.”

“I… I just...” Victor didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t tell Pilar the truth. He hated the confusion inside of him so much that there was no way he could live with another person knowing about it. Well, another person that he knew in real life anyway; Simon was a complete stranger and didn’t really count. It was too raw, too scary and painful. He had to try to put the pieces of his mask back together.

“Actually, something did happen,” he said finally, a half-truth being the most convincing lie. “I guess you must have been out here when it did. Um, you know Tom Davis? Well, he kind of attacked Benji tonight.”

Pilar frowned. “Benji? Is that that guy you work with at the cafe?”

Victor nodded. “Yeah. Uh, Benji’s… he brought another guy to the dance, as his, uh, date. And Tom Davis started messing with them, saying really shitty things to them, and then he hit Benji. Pretty hard. The teachers stopped it right away, but I was next to them when it happened, and I don’t know… I guess seeing someone get attacked like that, it kind of freaked me out. I wanted to stop it, but I couldn’t get in between them fast enough...”

“Okay, so, Benji’s gay? And that’s why Tom Davis hit him?”

“Yeah, basically.”

“That’s really messed up.”

“Yeah.”

Pilar shook her head. “But I don’t get how that had you so freaked out you couldn’t even hear me talking to you from like two feet away. That doesn’t make sense, Victor.”

He struggled to figure out some way, any way, to explain this, that didn’t lead to the truth of it all. “I think it was… it was just the adrenaline, I guess, from almost getting caught up in the fight. Like, my body was all tensed up, ready to try and take on this guy that’s like twice as big as me… And maybe some part of me was remembering getting injured yesterday? I don’t know, it’s hard to explain.”

Pilar didn’t look remotely convinced, but to his relief, she finally seemed to give up on pursuing it further. She probably had a lot on her mind already, with everything that had happened with Eric, and Victor felt a stab of guilt for being a little bit grateful that she was so distracted. Pilar’s shoulders sagged.

“Can we just go home now?” she asked him. “I don’t want to be here anymore.”

“Yeah, we can do that. I’ll go find Felix and see if he minds driving us back.”

“No, I really don’t want to see anyone right now. Can we just walk?”

Walking to their house from the school would take a while, but Victor didn’t really feel like seeing anyone else either. However, there was at least one person he had to see before they could go.

“Okay. Uh, just let me go find Mia and let her know.”

“Oh, shit, I forgot about Mia. Maybe you should stay here, Victor.”

He stood up, brushing off his slacks. “No, it’s okay. Mia will understand. I’ll just tell her that you’re not feeling well and I need to help you get home, okay?”

Pilar nodded, and Victor left her there to wait for him while he went to look for Mia. He found her talking with a friend not too far from the entrance, fortunately, and she looked concerned when she saw him. She said something to her friend and walked over to him.

“Is everything okay? You just kind of vanished on me.”

“I know, and I’m so sorry about that. What happened earlier with Tom Davis and Benji just kind of freaked me out a little, I guess. I felt bad that I couldn’t get to Tom in time to stop him.”

Mia nodded slowly, looking a little confused. “That’s not your fault, Victor.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry for being such a weirdo.” He reached up, hesitantly pushed one of Mia’s curls back behind her ear. “Um, there’s something else. I ran into Pilar and she’s feeling really sick all of a sudden. She asked me to take her home.”

Mia’s face fell. “Oh. Okay. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“This whole night has kind of been a disaster, hasn’t it?”

Mia shook her head, the corner of her mouth rising. “Well, not the whole night. Dancing with you earlier was really nice.”

“Yeah, it really was. I’m so sorry I have to leave like this, but I promise that I’ll make it up to you later if you’ll let me.”

“It’s okay, Victor. Go take care of your sister, and tell her I hope she feels better soon.”

Mia was standing there, looking up at him, her silver dress sparkling in the light, and he couldn’t believe how understanding and patient she was being with him. He didn’t think that he deserved it.

“Okay. Well, uh, goodnight.” He leaned forward, kissed her softly for a moment. It was getting a little easier each time he did it, a little more comfortable. It left him feeling warmer.

“Goodnight, Victor.”

All Victor wanted when he woke up on Sunday was to stay in bed and not talk to anyone, but after missing church last weekend because of the party, he knew there was no way he was getting out of it that day. He tugged open the curtain covering the window next to his bed, and laid there as long as he could, just watching the leaves shifting on the oak tree outside.

No matter how much he wanted to just lie there and think of nothing, he couldn’t stay like that forever. Eventually he dragged himself out of bed, showered, got dressed. Went back to being Normal Victor. Sat at the breakfast table with his family eating his toast and eggs, passing his mom the pitcher of iced tea, helping Adrian mop up his juice when it spilled. The one saving grace was Pilar’s storm cloud appearance that morning, her mouth a grim line, which prevented their parents from asking them anything about the dance.

When they’d gotten home the night before, their parents had been surprised to see them both back so early. Pilar had kicked off her heels and rushed off to her room, her door slamming behind her with a resounding thud, ignoring the questions of concern from Isabel and Armando. Victor had been left to explain what had happened with Eric that night.

Now Pilar was still in her pajamas, despite the fact that they had to leave for church in the next ten minutes. When Isabel tentatively asked her if she was going to get dressed, Pilar had just stared back at her defiantly and said she wasn’t going anywhere. Then she’d stormed off to her room again.

It was hard not to feel a little jealous that Pilar got to just be left alone today, which was really all that Victor wanted, too. But then he remembered her tear-streaked face in the school parking lot, the way her back had shaken under his arm as she cried, and he hated himself a bit for envying her when she was obviously hurting so much.

So when it came time to leave Victor dutifully climbed into the backseat of the car with Adrian, wearing a pair of dark jeans and a button up shirt, and watched their house disappear in the window.

Church felt very normal that day. He stood next to his father, watching his mom singing in the choir and everyone going through the motions. He crossed himself when he was expected to, sat down, stood up, knelt on the prayer bench, mumbled along quietly with the songs and the repetitions of “Have mercy on us”, got lost in daydreams while Father Hurtado gave his homily, let his eyes wander over the stained glass depictions of the stations of the cross. His gaze snagged on the first one, as it always did, of Jesus with his hands bound, held by a Roman guard, being judged. He could never remember the prescribed prayers for the other stations, but that first one always stuck with him. _“You stand all alone before Pilate. Nobody speaks up for you. Nobody helps defend you.”_

Would anybody speak up for him, if it were his sins on trial?

Church felt normal, all the people and the prayers and the routine, but Victor didn’t. He didn’t feel _normal_ anymore, he didn’t belong here, not like he used to.

Everything had changed so much. _Victor_ had changed so much, and he hated it.

He used to like coming to church. It had been like a second home to him when he was growing up. There were other kids to play with and fun activities at Sunday school, the weekly hugs and kisses from Abuelo Tito and Abuela Nati, there were the holidays and chasing Feña and Pilar around the playground outside, there were the moments of humor in Father Hurtado’s speeches, and all the kind, familiar faces. When he was little they hadn’t come as regularly, maybe because Armando wasn’t as devout as Isabel. Church had always seemed like more of a social obligation as far as his father was concerned. But then Isabel’s own father had gotten sick, and she had to start making trips to Puerto Rico every few months to help her aging mother care for him, and every time she came back, Isabel seemed a little more serious about religion than before. She joined the choir and the women’s group and soon they were attending church every Sunday without fail. Victor hadn’t really minded, at first. It meant more time hanging out with Feña and the other kids at Sacred Heart.

Then, a couple years ago, those little things that he’d been trying to ignore began to pile up and became a real source of anxiety and confusion. Things like noticing another guy’s arms or shoulders, feeling uncomfortable watching his friends start to date, always feeling like the odd one out when the other guys he hung out with talked about girls and not really understanding why. Meeting Daniel last summer and feeling something, not just physical but emotional, too, and strong enough he couldn’t just brush it away like every other moment of attraction or confusion before it. Wanting so badly to act on it. Praying that it was just a fluke, that it wouldn’t happen again, until it did, until he met Benji and it all felt so impossible to run away from, even though he was trying as hard as he could.

He thought of Mia and how it had felt to kiss her last night. She was like a life raft, like his last chance to save himself from drowning. He didn’t know if holding onto her was right – maybe some part of him, some guilty, bitter part knew that it wasn’t – but he didn’t know how to let go.

As soon as mass had finished and he could safely excuse himself, he rushed out of the church. His parents would be a while longer, talking with their friends and then picking up Adrian from Sunday school, so he could finally have a little time to himself. To one side of the church, near the playground, was a small garden, where roses grew at the feet of statues of the Virgin and Saint Francis, and there were shady spots to sit on benches under the old trees.

Victor turned a corner, headed for a secluded spot he liked in the back, and discovered that it was already taken.

“Victor!” Feña exclaimed in surprise, hastily moving to hide the cigarette she was holding under the bench. She seemed to realize the futility of the action, since he’d already seen it, and she pulled it back out, grimacing. “You saw nothing, got it?”

“Saw what?” Victor said, sitting down on the bench next to her. “Your dad would totally kill you if he caught you smoking.”

She rolled her eyes, taking a drag and letting out the smoke with practiced ease. “Only because he feels so guilty about being a bad role model who smokes a pack a day. Where do you think I got this one from?”

“How long have you been out here?”

“I might’ve slipped out before communion… How was the homily today? Anything life changing?”

Victor shrugged. “Not really. Just, you know, the usual stuff: forgiveness, turning the other cheek, some parable I don’t remember… Oh, and an announcement about bingo night.”

“Damn, what was it? I wouldn’t want to miss anything important about Bingo Wednesdays.” Feña laughed and held the cigarette toward him.

Victor had only tried smoking something once, at a party last year, when Jeremy and Matt had offered him a joint. He’d coughed until his eyes watered, refused to try a second time, and never really felt much of anything as a result of doing it wrong. He waved away the cigarette, already kind of grossed out by the acrid smell. “No thanks. Do you do this a lot? Skip communion to come out here and smoke?”

“I mean, no, because my parents really would kill me if I did it too much, but they kind of turn a blind eye every now and then. To the escaping mass early, I mean, not the smoking. They don’t know about that and I plan on keeping it that way. It’s just so boring, sitting through the same old thing every week. What about you, aren’t you tired of it? Or do you really believe in all of that?”

He’d known Feña almost as long as Felix, and when they were kids she’d been one of his best friends. But then they’d gotten older and Feña’s family demanded more and more of her, making her work long shifts in their bakery after school or stay home to watch her younger siblings, and he didn’t see her much except for lunch in the cafeteria and Sundays after mass. It had been years since they’d talked about anything more serious than homework or school gossip.

The question of faith was a thorny one. He wore the cross his Abuela Maria had given him pretty much every day, went to church on Sundays, bowed his head when they said grace before dinner, but it usually just felt like going through the motions. It had been a long time since he’d prayed and meant it.

“I don’t know… Are you saying you don’t? Believe in all of it?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I’m not sure I ever really believed in it. Even when we were kids, I think I was always waiting for someone to finally admit it was all just stories.”

There had been moments when Victor had thought that it was all real. Moments when the candles lit up the paintings in the church and made them glow, made the eyes of the saints flicker like they were alive, moments when he’d prayed and it felt like maybe there was someone listening.

“I guess I always believed in it before, but now… I don’t know. I’m not sure what I believe anymore.”

“I have to admit, I am a little surprised to hear you say that. You’ve always kind of been the golden boy, haven’t you? Everybody here loves you, they all think you’re such a nice, sweet boy,” Feña said with a laugh. “And they’re basically right about that. You actually are just as nice as you seem. I must be a terrible person though because it makes me feel better to know that even the golden boy has some doubts about the whole God thing.”

Victor sighed, watching as Feña stubbed out the end of her cigarette. “I’m probably not as perfect as you think.”

Feña giggled. “Yeah, sure. I bet your biggest, darkest secret is that you still like to get down to Carly Rae Jepsen songs.”

He felt his face heat up a little as he remembered his first night closing at Brasstown with Benji. Feña caught his blush and her jaw dropped open in shocked delight.

“Oh my god, you really do, don’t you?”

“Ugh, shut up,” Victor said, playfully shoving her until she was in danger of falling off the bench. Feña clung to his arm, pushing back against him and giggling. For a wonderful second it felt like they were both children again, no big, life-altering, world view changing questions hanging over their heads.

“Whatever, like you didn’t love that dance I made up when we were kids. What’s your big, dark secret then?” Victor asked her, his tone of voice teasing. He wasn’t actually expecting a real answer.

Feña dug the toe of her sandal into the gravel underfoot, her expression growing serious. “You really want to know? And if I tell you, this stays between us, right? Not even Felix, Victor.”

He nodded. “Absolutely. You can trust me.”

“Yeah, I know, golden boy,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I know you wouldn’t break a promise. Okay, so I’ve kinda been seeing someone. An older guy, actually. And it’s amazing, he’s so cool… but I can’t tell anyone. We have to run around in secret meeting each other at weird times because I know my parents would lose their minds if they found out about him.”

“Why? Just how much older _is_ this guy?”

“He’s only eighteen, Victor, god. You can stop clutching your pearls now,” Feña said, rolling her eyes at him. She let out a heavy sigh. “It’s because I’m the oldest daughter. Do you get what that means?”

He shook his head.

“Okay. Like, when me and my brothers and sisters get home from school, they go off and play and watch TV and whatever, and I go do the laundry. And vacuum. And clean the kitchen. And then start making dinner. When I have to work all afternoon at the bakery with my dad, we get home and he sits down on the couch and puts his feet up and drinks a beer. But me and mom, we don’t get to put our feet up. We give the little ones baths and put them to bed, and we check they all did their homework, and we make sure their lunch is ready for school the next day. It doesn’t matter that we spent the whole day working, too. So, yeah… that’s what it means to be the oldest daughter. In my family, anyway.”

“That’s… that’s really awful, Feña. That sounds exhausting.”

“Yeah, it is. And it’s not just all of that. There’s all this pressure on me, too, to do all of it without complaining because that’s what a good girl should do. A good girl should be at home, taking care of her family, not skipping mass or smoking cigarettes or running around at night with boys. So I can’t tell anyone about him, and it sucks, it’s making things really hard for us.”

“I’m so sorry,” Victor said, amazed at how much he didn’t know about one of his oldest friends. How wrapped up in his own problems was he? “I had no idea about any of that.”

She shrugged. “It’s okay. I never really talk about it, so there’s no way you would’ve known.”

“I don’t know what it’s like to deal with all of that, but I do kind of get what you said about pressure. There’s a lot of pressure on me, too.” He smiled self-deprecatingly. “It’s not easy being the golden boy. I feel like everyone just expects me to be this version of myself that they decided on, and I don’t really get any say in it. It’s… it’s really hard to be that person all the time.”

Feña leaned into his shoulder comfortably. “We haven’t really talked to each other in a long time, have we? Not like this. We should do it more often. I think I’d like to find out who the real version of you is.”

Sitting there in the shadow of the church, it was hard to imagine ever showing the real him to anyone. What would the real him even look like, if he came out of hiding? Would anyone like what they saw? Or would they condemn him?

Part of Victor’s punishment for the whole stoplight party evening of rule-breaking did, in fact, turn out to be a deep cleaning of the chicken coop, a horrible task that only had to be done about twice a year. He was on his hands and knees scrubbing chicken droppings off the floor, his senses being assaulted by the combined noise and stench of the birds plus the eye-watering scent of bleach, cursing himself for ever breaking curfew, when Felix arrived. Felix, whose fault it was that he had to break curfew in the first place.

Well, Victor had been drinking at the party, too, so he knew he wasn’t blameless… but as his back and arms ached from the effort of scrubbing, it felt a lot more satisfying to just blame Felix.

Felix popped his head in the door of the coop, face scrunching up in disgust at the smell. “Oh, man, is it ripe in here. Is it just me or is it even nastier than usual?”

“It’s not just you,” Victor grunted out. He sat back, resting for a moment, and then threw an extra brush at his friend. “If you want to talk, start scrubbing.”

Felix was too nice for his own good, because he just rolled up his sleeves, knelt down beside Victor, and got to work.

“So… I heard from Mia that you guys left the dance early because Pilar was sick. Is everything okay?”

Victor rolled his neck, trying to give a little relief to the ache in his spine. He sighed. “She wasn’t sick, actually, just really upset. You’re basically family, so I think it’s okay if I tell you, but don’t spread it around, all right? She caught Eric cheating on her with her friend Kate last night.”

“Oh, crap, that’s _horrible_. So what do you wanna do, as big brother? Should we go egg his house later? Leave a dead fish in his car? Or the classic itching powder in his gym shorts?”

“We’re not doing anything, Felix. You really think Pilar needs _us_ to fight her battles for her?”

“Good point. So, um, someone probably already told you about this, but… well, did you hear what happened after you left?”

Victor had a sudden sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach. So many awful things had happened at the dance the night before, he couldn’t help assuming that whatever had occurred after they left had also been terrible. He shook his head.

“Oh. So, a little while after you went home, they announced the Homecoming King and Queen. And… uh, you won, Victor. You and Mia.”

Victor’s hand jerked as his whole body leaned back to stare at Felix in shock, and he nearly overturned the bucket of bleach-infused water. _“What?”_

“Yeah. I know, I can’t believe it either, my best friend got named the _Homecoming King_.” Felix sat back, grinning at Victor. “Dude, I’m so happy for you. You are totally killing sophomore year.”

How on earth was any of this really happening to him? Dating one of the prettiest girls at school, winning a popularity contest… He felt like his life was becoming a cheesy teen movie. It was completely surreal. He was up to his elbows in chicken shit, for god’s sake, how could he possibly be the Homecoming King?

“Wow. That’s just… that’s crazy. I don’t even know what to say.”

“Right? But wait, there’s more. Since you guys weren’t there to get crowned and do the whole special dance thing in front of the whole school, Lake got up on stage to accept on behalf of Mia. But she’d apparently dumped Kieran as her date for being an asshole and didn’t have anyone to accept your spot. She kind of stood up there awkwardly for a bit, like, not really knowing what to do, and she… she looked at me. Like, right at me, Victor, there was no mistaking it, and she picked up the mic and for a second I was positive she was going to ask me to dance with her, right there in front of everyone.”

Victor wasn’t sitting down, but if he had been he would’ve been on the edge of his seat. “But…? What happened?”

“But… before she could say anything, Andrew walked up to the stage, and held out his hand to her, and she took it. They did the dance thing and Lake looked like she was really grateful that he’d rescued her from being stuck on stage without a date and feeling humiliated in front of everyone. And… and I just had to stand there and watch them dance and it sucked. It really, _really_ sucked. The way she was looking at me, I honestly believed she was going to pick me, and now I guess I’ll never know.”

Neither of them were really scrubbing the floor anymore. They just knelt there, with the chickens clucking noisily outside the coop and considered what Felix had said for a long moment.

Eventually, Felix sighed, his shoulders drooping. “I know she hasn’t been treating me very well, and she turned me down when I asked her to the dance, so I should probably just give up on her. I have a lot more in common with Wendy, anyway, right? But I don’t know. Maybe there’s still something there.”

“Felix...”

“Look, I get that it doesn’t make sense, but I can’t change the way that I feel. You know?”

Victor nodded, a heavy feeling in his chest, like his heart ached so much it was weighing him down. “Yeah. I know.”

Victor wasn’t supposed to work that night, but someone called in sick and so he ended up coming in for a closing shift with Benji. It was clear from the moment he walked in the door that Benji wasn’t his usual self. He nodded at Victor without saying anything when he came in, and Victor literally gasped out loud at the sight of the dark bruise that spread across the right side of Benji’s face. He’d seen Benji get hit, he should have been expecting to see him looking like this, but he wasn’t. It was hard to tell what hurt worse to look at, the blue and purple skin radiating out from Benji’s cheekbone, or the subdued way Benji was moving around behind the counter, the slump of his shoulders, the downturn of his mouth.

The evening passed by quietly. Although Benji wasn’t avoiding him like he had after the party, they didn’t talk much. It was obvious that Benji didn’t really feel up to it and as much as Victor wanted to check on him, to ask if he was okay, to find out what he was thinking, he held himself back, at least until the door was locked and the sign flipped to “Closed”, until it was just him and Benji alone in the quiet cafe.

They were wiping down tables and putting up the chairs when Victor finally let himself ask, “How are you doing? Are you okay?”

Benji nodded tightly. “Yeah, fine. It’s just a bruise. Pretty sure you won the Who Got Injured the Worst Contest this weekend.”

“Oh, okay.” Victor paused in his work, twisting the rag in his hands. His injury wasn’t the same, and they both knew it. “Benji, I’m so sorry that happened to you. You didn’t deserve any of that.”

“I know. Oh, congrats on winning Homecoming King, by the way. Nobody deserves it more than you and Mia.”

“Thanks.” Victor pushed away the discomfort, the guilt, that Benji’s comment stirred up inside him. It hurt to say it, but Victor forced himself to ask, “What, um... What about Adam? Is he doing all right?”

“I guess so. He didn’t really get hurt when Tom knocked him down, if that’s what you mean. But we were both kind of shaken up after what happened. To be honest, I don’t know if we’re going to see each other again. It just feels weird now.”

Victor really hated himself for the sheer relief he felt when he heard that. Why couldn’t he just have been happy for Benji? He had Mia now, and it was so selfish of him to wish that Benji wouldn’t find someone, too.

Leaning back against one of the tables, Benji ran a hand through his hair roughly. “I can’t stop thinking that maybe I made a mistake, though, when I thought I could just keep living here the way I was living in Atlanta. Brandon isn’t exactly Atlanta, is it? I guess I thought I was done hiding and I wasn’t going to go back in the closet just because we moved to a small town in Texas. It’s not like things were perfect at my old school. Sure, it got better after those other guys, Simon and Bram, came out… but I still got called names sometimes, I still had guys try to avoid me in the locker room or whatever. I still lost friends just for being who I am.”

“That really sucks, Benji.”

“Yeah, but I could handle it. It was worth dealing with some minor crap like that to be able to be myself, finally. Especially after everything I went through before I came out. It’s just… well, nothing like last night ever happened to me before. That was the first time anyone looked at me that way, with so much hate, or actually physically attacked me.”

Benji crossed his arms over his chest, and he looked so much smaller like that. There was nothing Victor wanted more than to go to him and wrap him up in an embrace, to do anything that would take away some of the pain in Benji’s eyes. Instead, he stood frozen in place, hands gripping the rag too tight, paralyzed by his fear and indecision.

“There are a lot of good people here,” Benji said, turning his face up for just a second to look at Victor. “I’ve made some good friends already, and there’s a lot I like about Brandon, but… sometimes, I wish we’d never moved here.”

It had only been a month since he’d met Benji, and Victor wondered what things would have been like if he hadn’t come to Brandon. Life probably would have been easier for Victor, without all of the turmoil and confusion that Benji awoke inside of him. He could’ve just kept on going with his normal life, trying to ignore all the little things that set him apart from everyone else and made him feel so alone. Maybe he could’ve started this thing with Mia and really been able to focus on just her, with no other distractions. But Victor hated the thought of never having met Benji, never having danced with him or worked with him in the cafe, never laughing together at the thrift store and seeing the way Benji’s face looked all lit up with joy at the concert. Maybe life would have been easier for both of them if Benji had never come to Brandon, but it wouldn’t have been better. Not for Victor, anyway.

“I know it’s hard for you, being here,” he said, slowly, softly, unable to look at Benji as he did, “but I’m so glad that you are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope that getting this chapter up so quickly makes up for the cliffhanger last time :)
> 
> Next up, Victor turns sweet sixteen...


	10. Sweet Sixteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: homophobia, use of mild homophobic language, internalized homophobia
> 
> Another long one! How did it end up over 8k?? But there was a lot to get through in this chapter. Enjoy!

The next week and a half passed by in a total blur for Victor. There was another basketball game on the weekend, which meant a lot of extra hours put in at practice. Even though Victor couldn’t really play because of his injury, Coach Harris kept him busy running laps around the court, studying new plays, and organizing equipment. One of the college students working at Brasstown had to cancel shifts because of a family emergency, so he’d picked up some extra hours there, trying to get through his ever increasing pile of homework at the counter in between customers. The chemistry project he’d been working on with Mia was keeping him busy too, since they had to turn in their first lab report soon, so he and Mia spent some time working on it together at her house after school on the days he didn’t have to work at Brasstown.

Things with Mia were going really well. On Tuesday after the Homecoming dance, he’d gone to her house to work on the project, and they’d gotten a lot done. As it was getting late, Mia leaned in to kiss him and then they spent a while just making out on the sofa in her living room. It had been surprisingly nice, much better than the other times he’d tried making out with a girl at a party. There was something about Mia that just made her so much easier to be with.

She’d pulled back after awhile and with that shyness that she only displayed in moments like those, she’d ducked her head a little and asked him, “What are we doing, Victor? Are we together now?”

For some reason, Tom Davis’ face had flashed through his mind just then, that angry, hateful expression right before he’d swung his fist. It made his heart pound with fear, as if it had been him who’d been struck and not Benji.

He shoved the memory away, focusing on Mia before him, on the way her brown eyes were catching the warm light of the lamp nearby. Their hands were intertwined in Mia’s lap and he liked the feel of her slender fingers woven between his own. He’d liked kissing her, too, and talking with her, and dancing together.

“I’d like that,” he said, whispering it, like he was afraid to be overheard. Was it wrong to want to hold onto Mia? Was it wrong to try and make this work? But what was the alternative? “I mean, if you want to.”

Mia’s smile was so wide and bright and beautiful. She kissed him again and said, “Yeah, I really do.”

So Victor had a girlfriend now, for the first time in his life, and everyone was so excited and happy for him. They took turns eating with Mia’s friends on some days and Victor’s on others, but always together. Victor dreaded the days they ate at Mia’s table, because it was still so hard to be around both Mia and Benji, and even harder now that his heart constricted painfully every time he saw the mottled bruise on Benji’s face. But fortunately Benji had apparently made some other friends recently and didn’t always eat with Mia’s group like he used to. On the days he wasn’t sitting there with them, Victor felt torn between relief and disappointment, his eyes always seeking out Benji in the crowd before he even realized what he was doing.

His parents had been thrilled to hear that he and Mia were officially dating now, and although he’d been reluctant to tell them about winning Homecoming King, they’d found out anyway from Felix when he’d come over for dinner. Their excitement about his relationship might have been even more overwhelming if it weren’t for the fact that they were forced to tone it down around Pilar, who was still moody and angry all the time after her break up with Eric. Unfortunately they shared the news with the whole extended family, and Abuela Nati gave him a crushing hug at church that week, kissing him, and then suddenly smacking him on the arm and complaining that he still hadn’t introduced her to Mia yet.

“You’ll just have to let us meet her at your _fiesta_ next weekend,” she’d said firmly, and Victor was overcome with horror at the thought of Mia encountering all his many relatives all at once next Saturday. But there was clearly no fighting it, so he just nodded and smiled weakly.

It was the Thursday before the party, and he was working a closing shift with Benji again that evening, when Lake and Mia showed up at Brasstown. They’d been doing that more often since Homecoming, hanging out at a table near the window and working on their homework together, and chatting with Benji and Victor whenever they had time.

When his half hour break came around, Victor made himself a cappuccino and went to sit with the girls. He’d been putting off inviting Mia to his birthday party all week because he was genuinely freaking out about her meeting so many of his relatives all at one time, but he couldn’t procrastinate any longer.

“So, uh, this Saturday my family is throwing a birthday party for me,” Victor said. “It’s just gonna be a big family thing, with a few of my friends, but you guys should come. If you’re free, that is.”

“Yeah, that sounds really fun,” Mia said, giving his hand a squeeze.

“That depends,” Lake said. “Who else is going to be there?”

Victor figured that Lake was fishing for confirmation that Felix would be at the party, so he said vaguely, “Oh, just some friends and like _ten thousand_ relatives. It’s probably going to be kinda boring, but the food will be good, at least.”

Benji came over and handed a smoothie to Lake just then. “Here you go, sorry that took forever. The blender’s been giving me hell today.”

“Oooh,” Lake said, perking up, “You should come to Victor’s birthday party this weekend! It sounds like the ratio of hot people to old people is going to be totally tragic, so you need to help us balance it out.”

Benji just shook his head in amusement, used to this kind of outrageous flirting from Lake by now. “Sure, that sounds cool. I mean, if you want me to come.”

He was staring at Victor, and Victor was suddenly uncomfortably aware of how close he and Mia were sitting, how their joined hands were resting on the tabeltop in clear view. Victor nodded awkwardly. “Um, yeah. You should come. If you want.”

“Great. I’ll be there,” Benji said.

Victor could not possibly be dreading this party more.

On Saturday he woke up to the smell of bacon and coffee wafting tantalizingly from the kitchen, where music was playing, and he could hear his mom and Adrian’s voices singing along. It was such a nice thing to wake up to that he almost forgot for a moment what day it was and why he’d been up till nearly two in the morning the night before too full of anxiety to sleep. It was eight thirty, a little bit later than he usually slept, and everyone would be coming over around two. Everyone meaning his grandparents, his many aunts and uncles and cousins, his friends, and… and _Mia and Benji_.

_Fuck. How am I going to get through this day?_

His door swung open and Adrian bounced into his room, jumping up onto the bed dangerously close to Victor’s kneecaps. “Victor! _Mami y yo estamos haciendo_ breakfast _para ti_! Come on, _Mami_ got _mallorca_ and there’s bacon _and_ sausage and I made the eggs!”

“Wow, that sounds great,” Victor said, a little overwhelmed. “Just let me get dressed, okay? I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

“Okay!”

Victor picked up his phone, which was lit up with notifications. Most of them were birthday messages, including a pretty adorable GIF from Mia featuring a tiny hamster in a party hat with an equally tiny piece of cake. There was an Instagram DM, too, from Simon.

_Hey Victor, thanks for letting me know you’re okay. Really glad to hear that things are going well for you, and I hope that you had a great time with Mia at the Homecoming dance._

_If you still need someone to talk to, about whatever, I’m here for you._

He stared at the message for a few minutes, and felt bad about how dishonest his previous response had been. Why had he lied about everything being fine? Simon was just some stranger on the other side of the country. The whole point of messaging Simon in the first place was to get some relief from the loneliness of carrying his confusion and fear on his own. He’d just needed _one_ person that he could be real with. He drew in a deep breath, and began to type a reply.

_Simon, so today is actually my birthday, and in a little while my house is going to be packed with a bunch of my extended family and some of my friends from school. Including Mia, who is actually my girlfriend now._

_We officially became a couple after the dance, and it’s been really nice so far. I love spending time with her, and holding hands and kissing her has been nice. I even got those butterflies, you know, just like everyone talks about._

_I am kind of stressed out about today though. My grandparents will be here, and a lot of my aunts and uncles and cousins, and they’re all going to be so excited to meet Mia. It just… feels like a lot of pressure. On top of that, my parents have been fighting non-stop lately, and my sister is depressed and won’t talk to anyone since her boyfriend cheated on her. Things have been really hard for our family, so it feels like today has to be perfect._

_I’ve always been the fixer in my family. Whenever things are going wrong, I jump in with pancakes or a joke or whatever and find a way to distract everyone. But the thing is, Benji is also coming to the party today. An out and proud gay guy will be here, in my house, surrounded by all of my conservative family, and my Abuelo Tito who is… well, always saying very old fashioned things. You get the idea._

_I have a feeling this party is going to be a disaster, and I have no idea what to do to fix it._

_Victor_

When he made his way out to the kitchen a short while later, the table was already set with coffee and pastries and all of his favorite breakfast foods, and his mom gave him a kiss on the cheek as she handed him a mug of coffee. “ _Feliz cumpleaños, mi amor!_ My god, I can’t believe my baby is already sixteen! Stop growing up so fast, you’re making me feel old.”

“Tell me about it,” Armando said, as he took a seat at the table. Victor couldn’t help noticing the way Isabel tensed up a little when he entered the room, but at least they were sort of talking to each other again, and it had been over a week since he’d last found his father asleep on the sofa in the morning. “You excited about your party, _macho?_ How many friends do you have joining us?”

“Um, not a ton,” he answered. He did a little mental math: Felix, Feña, Matt, Alicia (sans Jeremy, thank god), Lake, Mia… _Benji_ … “About seven, I think.”

Armando frowned. He didn’t look at Isabel when he asked her, “Hm, do you think one cake is going to be enough?”

“No, I know it’s not enough. That’s why I’m baking two of them today.”

“I’m helping!” Adrian announced enthusiastically.

“ _Two?_ You’re gonna bake _two tres leches cakes_ _by two o’clock? And_ all that other stuff you were planning on making for lunch?”

Isabel let out a frustrated sigh, her eyes narrowing. “ _Really_? Who do you think was busy all day yesterday cleaning this house and putting up decorations, huh? And doing all the shopping? And making the snacks, and wrapping the presents? And on top of that, I’m going to have your mother here judging all of it! I don’t need you judging me and telling me I’m not good enough, too!”

“I’m not judging you, Isa, I’m just saying it’s not a lot of time, and maybe it wouldn’t hurt to ask my mom for a little help with the cakes-”

“There is no way-”

Victor was scrambling to think of something, _anything_ , to derail this argument before it ended in an explosion, and by some miracle was saved by a knock at the door. He rushed to stand up, shouting, “Gosh, who could that be? I’ll get it!”

Adrian was right behind him, clearly unwilling to be left alone in the kitchen with their parents mid-fight. Down the hallway he could still hear the shower running. Pilar was really taking her time in there that morning, probably to minimize any human contact as much as possible. He wished he’d thought of that.

He opened the door to find Felix on the other side, holding a big package wrapped up in bright blue paper with a huge yellow bow on top, which he handed off to Victor.

“Victor, happy birthday, buddy! Fuh-leez cumplee-anos,” he said, grinning proudly at his attempt at Spanish. Victor was amazed at how bad Felix continued to be at the language considering how much time Felix had spent at the Salazar house _and_ the fact that he’d been studying it at school since freshman year.

Adrian shook his head sadly. “Please don’t do that again.”

Felix looked crestfallen. “Did I get it wrong?”

Victor smiled, bumping his shoulder against Felix’s. “Don’t worry, we’ll work on your pronunciation later.”

He added the gift to the ones his mom had set out on a table in the living room, and they all stood around for a bit, trying to ignore the raised voices in the kitchen. “Let’s go outside,” Victor said, and Felix nodded eagerly.

“Me, too!” Adrian insisted, tagging along with them.

They ended up hanging out with the horses, Felix perched on the split rail fence in the shade of the oak tree, and Victor helped Adrian to groom them and offer them carrots. It had been a few weeks since he’d done any riding, so after that he pulled out a couple of blankets and saddles from the barn and quickly got the two horses all set up.

“Wanna take them out to the back field?” Victor asked Felix and his brother, referring to the wide expanse of land beyond the Salazar’s property that was a state-protected natural area with some dusty trails criss-crossing through it. “I think we have plenty of time to go and still get cleaned up before the guests arrive.”

“Yay!” Adrian squealed, so high-pitched it made Victor and Felix wince. “I call dibs on Elsa!”

Although Victor preferred to ride Beau, he let Felix take him instead, since Beau was older and calmer than Elsa and therefore easier for a less experienced rider like Felix to handle. Adrian sat in front of him on Elsa, the two of them holding onto the reins together, and they headed out.

The day was slightly overcast, leading to blessedly cooler temperatures in the low eighties, and the dusty trail into the nature area was shaded by tall oaks and cedars. Adrian chattered away the entire time, telling Victor all about the decorations he’d helped pick out for the party and giving away some present-related spoilers that Victor would later have to pretend he’d never heard. Even with Adrian talking a mile a minute it was so peaceful out there that it was doing a lot to soothe Victor’s anxiety about what would happen once everyone arrived.

They stopped the horses at a small river and let them take a drink while they stood on the edge and tried to skip stones. The river was too narrow for it to really work, the stones just sinking or getting tossed into the cactus and weeds on the other side. Victor wished he could just stay there playing with his best friend and little brother all day, but eventually it was time to go back or risk being covered in dust and smelling of horses when the party started.

The first guests to arrive were Abuelo Tito and Abuela Nati. They both gave Victor big hugs, congratulating him yet again on his new girlfriend and winning Homecoming King and Queen. Adrian wrapped himself around Nati’s legs demanding attention, so she hugged him and Tito handed a small present over to Adrian.

“Can’t leave you out of all the fun,” he said, tousling Adrian’s hair. Adrian grinned in delight.

“Can I open it now? Please?”

“Sure, why not?”

Adrian ripped open the paper, throwing pieces of it across the room, and then stood there staring at his gift in confusion. “Um… what’s this?”

Tito knelt down next to him, pointing out the features. “It’s a tank, and it comes with all these little foam darts so you can chase your sister around. Just look out you don’t shoot at me, I’m not so good at running anymore,” Tito said, chuckling.

Adrian frowned, looking a little confused and upset. “But why would I want to shoot you?”

At a loss, Tito shrugged. “Just for fun. That’s what little boys like, isn’t it? Getting to shoot things?”

Adrian nodded but he didn’t look convinced. He took his new toy and went to sit next to Abuela Nati, poking at the wheels in silence. It was the first time he’d been quiet all day.

Lake, Mia, and Benji were next to arrive, having all driven over together. Victor opened the door for them and hoped no one noticed how nervous he looked. He pasted on a smile, trying to keep his eyes trained on Mia.

“Hey, guys. Mia, you look great,” he said, standing aside to let them all in.

Armando and Tito wandered away from the soccer game they’d been watching to come say hi.

“Abuelo Tito, these are my friends, Lake, Mia, and Benji,” Victor said.

Tito smiled. “Nice to meet you. So, which one are you dating? Not this one, I’m guessing,” he said with a big laugh, nodding his head at Benji.

Victor wished a sinkhole would just magically open up and swallow him whole right there on the spot. Anything would have been better than the awkward pause that followed Tito’s joke.

“Uh, no, this is Mia,” he said, reaching over to take her hand. Mia smiled, leaning into his side.

“It’s really nice to meet you, Mr. Salazar,” Mia said to Tito, pronouncing the “z” like a “th”. Everyone blinked a little in surprise.

“Oh. You speak Spanish?” Tito asked.

Mia nodded shyly. “ _Un poquito_. I, uh, used to spend summers in Barcelona with my dad.”

Tito slapped Victor on the shoulder approvingly. “That’s great! What a catch, eh, _macho?”_

“Uh, yeah. Mia’s awesome.”

Abuela Nati showed up then, having been in the bathroom, and her face lit up with excitement. “Oh, Victor, introduce me to your _novia!_ ”

Victor let his grandmother gush over Mia, asking her lots of questions about her family and just how much Spanish she could speak, while Lake and Benji wandered away toward the table of snacks in the kitchen. Just then, his mother popped her head around the doorway and made it clear from her very intense eye contact that she needed to speak to him immediately.

He tried to slip away, but unfortunately, Abuela Nati noticed.

“ _Isabel_ , _d_ _ónde está_ _Pilar_? We’ve been here nearly thirty minutes and I still haven’t seen her. You can’t even get her to leave her room for her own brother’s birthday?”

Isabel’s lips thinned into something that was more grimace than polite smile. “Pilar is having a rough time right now, I think we should give her a little space. I’m sure she’ll be out soon.”

Nati shook her head disapprovingly. “I knew something like this would happen. You should not let a girl her age go running around with boys like that.”

“Um, maybe I could try talking to her?” Mia asked, and Victor wanted to cringe at the icy expression that came over his mother’s face. Mia probably thought she was being helpful, but Victor could see that Isabel felt like she’d just been called out for being unable to control her own daughter in front of her mother in law.

“Sure,” Isabel said, her voice frosty. “Go right ahead.” She nodded toward the kitchen. “Victor, a word? Now?”

He left Mia to go try and talk with Pilar (it wouldn’t be hard for Mia to find her, she just had to follow the sound of the death metal echoing down the hallway) and went into the kitchen to find out what his mother wanted.

“What’s going on?”

“The cakes are a disaster, Victor, it’s a total nightmare. I thought I had enough condensed milk, but it turns out I didn’t buy enough cans for two cakes last night, and so I thought, fine, I’ll just do a _tres_ _leche_ cake _menos_ some _leche_ , who will know the difference? But you can tell, you can completely taste the difference, and I can’t put that out there when it’s Natalia’s specialty. She’s going to be reminding me about it until she dies, which might be today because I’m going to murder her if she doesn’t stop complaining about everything!”

“Okay, it’s fine, we can just go out and buy a couple of cakes,” Victor said in his most soothing tone of voice. Isabel sagged against the side of the fridge in relief.

“ _Oh, mi vida,_ thank you, you always know how to fix everything.” She smiled gratefully at him.

Victor went to find Felix, who was standing out on the patio with Lake, and they seemed to be in the middle of an intense conversation.

“Can you just tell me if you want-” Felix was saying, but cut himself off abruptly when Victor pushed open the sliding glass door.

“Uh, sorry to interrupt,” he said, stepping outside. “We kind of have a major cake emergency on our hands. Felix, do you think you could run out to that Mexican bakery in town and try to pick up two _tres leches_ cakes? If they don’t have two, then just get one and some other kind of cake. Please?”

“Of course, whatever you need, birthday boy.”

Lake bit her lip, and then rushed to say, “I’ll come with. I, um, totally forgot to get a present for Victor, so consider this my gift!”

“Oh, okay. Thanks guys,” Victor said. He went back inside to discover the living room had filled up with his Tio Sebastian and Tia Kati’s family, their eight year old twin boys hovering over Adrian and trying to fit the darts into his new toy tank. Feña and Alicia had arrived as well and were standing in the corner chatting with Benji.

He accepted hugs from Sebastian and Kati, who immediately started asking him where his new _novia_ was, and then there was another knock on the door, and his mom’s sister, Tia Pamela, and her family had arrived, and right behind them was Matt, and pretty soon the whole house and the patio outside were packed with people.

Mia and Pilar were nowhere to be seen, so he went out to talk with his friends who had migrated to the backyard. Nearby Adrian was twirling around with his Elsa wand pretending to freeze the darts that the twins were shooting at him from the tank, and Armando, Tito, and Tio Sebastian had formed a circle around the barbecue.

“Hey, happy birthday, dude,” Matt said, patting Victor on the shoulder. “How’s the wrist doing?”

“Okay. It doesn’t hurt that much anymore, and if everything’s fine at my check up next week I can get back to playing again.”

“Nice. We need our Sala-star back, pronto.”

Victor rolled his eyes, trying not to blush when Benji laughed and said, “Sala-star? Really?”

“My mom is the worst sometimes,” he said.

Matt grinned. “Remember that time she got told off by Principal Meyers for ‘excessive dancing’?”

Victor groaned, as Feña laughed and said, “Oh my god, that was amazing. I was actually there for that one. I thought she was going to kill herself dancing like that on those bleachers.”

“Yeah, and then she nearly got in a cat fight with Andrew’s mom when she said-” “Guys,” Victor protested loudly, trying not to look in Benji’s direction. He was definitely blushing now. He really didn’t need them running through the very long, very embarrassing list of his mom’s exploits at basketball games. “Come on. You can’t torture me like this on my birthday.”

Tito’s voice cut through the noise of several conversations just then, calling out, “Adrian, what are you doing playing with that thing? Where’s the new toy I got you?”

Adrian stopped bouncing around instantly, his shoulders drooping, moving his hands behind his back to hide the wand.

Tito glared at Armando. “ _This_ is how you raise your son? To play with girls’ toys? Mando, you need to get this under control before he turns out, you know, even more _flojito_ than he already is.”

Armando winced, saying, “No, _Papi_ , he’s a very macho boy. He usually uses that thing to sword fight, actually, don’t you _mijo_?”

Tito shook his head, unconvinced. “I bring him a special gift today, something more _appropriate,_ and he doesn’t even touch it. He just wants to keep playing with this, this _fairy wand_. Aren’t you worried that if he keeps going like this he’s going to be, ah, _maricón?”_

Victor was uncomfortably aware of the fact that everyone in his circle of friends was watching this exchange and glancing awkwardly between Victor, his family, and Benji. When he chanced a look at Benji, Victor could practically feel the tension radiating off of him.

Alicia looked at Victor expectantly. “Aren’t you going to say anything? You shouldn’t let him speak like that in front of Benji,” she said loudly. Benji’s lips pursed and he shot an irritated look at Alicia. Shit. This was turning into even more of a nightmare than he could have predicted.

Tito turned to look at them in confusion. “What does this have to do with Victor’s friend?”  
Suddenly everyone was staring at Victor. Tito, Armando, Adrian, all of the other relatives in the vicinity, his friends. Benji. He didn’t know what to do.

Benji sighed, started to say, “It’s because I’m-”

“Because Benji’s brother is gay!” Victor blurted out in a panic. All of his friends gaped at him, except for Benji, who looked furious. Knowing he was just digging himself in deeper but unable to stop the desperate flow of words, he stammered out, “Yeah, so, uh, he’s just a little sensitive about this stuff…”

Tito eyed Benji warily. “Oh. I see.”

Armando and Sebastian managed to draw Tito back over to the barbecue, and the other people in the backyard resumed their conversations. But in Victor’s own circle of friends, it was still quiet. Victor stared at Benji, his heart hammering painfully in his chest, and didn’t know what he could say that would ease the hurt and anger he saw in Benji’s eyes.

“Benji, I’m sorry-” he started, but Benji just shook his head.

“Whatever,” he bit out flatly, stalking away from them and back into the house.

“What a drama queen,” Matt said, rolling his eyes at Benji’s retreating back. Victor’s next breath was too quick, too short, that tight, closed in sensation gripping his chest again and squeezing. This was going so badly, and instead of fixing it, Victor had just made things a thousand times worse.

“Shut up, Matt,” Alicia snapped. “I can’t believe you, Victor. I thought you were better than that.”

Victor glared at her. “Well, I’m not the one that pretty much outed him in front of everybody.”

Alicia had the good sense to look a little ashamed. “I didn’t… That’s not what I was trying to do...”

“Maybe you should go and apologize to him,” Feña suggested to Victor.

“Yeah, I think I will.” He went back inside, passing by what looked like an awkward conversation between Mia and his mother, who was still clearly very stressed out, and saw that Pilar had finally emerged from her room in a surprisingly normal outfit, and was sitting on the sofa playing video games with their cousin Dylan. Eventually he found Benji in the hallway, coming out of the bathroom, and he didn’t exactly look happy to see Victor.

The noise from the rest of the house felt unbearably loud in contrast to the silence that stretched between them.

“Uh, could we talk for a second? Please?” Victor asked, and Benji reluctantly nodded and followed Victor into his bedroom. He shut the door, the break from all the loud voices and music and video game explosions a relief.

Benji just stood there, waiting for Victor to speak, and Victor was so overwhelmed by how bad he felt about what had happened that he couldn’t even stop to think about how surreal and kind of terrifying it was to have Benji alone in his room with him.

“I’m so sorry, Benji. I know I shouldn’t have said that. I just kind of panicked because my family’s been having a really hard time lately, and I knew that if my grandfather made a scene – an even bigger scene – then… well, then this party would be ruined. And I just really need things to go well today. I don’t know how much more fighting my family can take.”

Benji sighed, looking like all he wanted was to just escape from the room and Victor. “Coming out was really hard for me. And it’s still hard for me to be who I am, especially here in Texas, and with everything that happened at Homecoming.”

God, Victor felt like his guilt was going to eat him alive. How could he have done that, knowing just how difficult things had been for Benji since he came to Brandon? He couldn’t help looking at the healing scar on Benji’s cheek, just under his eye, all that was left now of his injury. He wondered if that faint pink scar would always be there from now on.

“I know,” Victor said, “And I’m really sorry.”

He swallowed, his heart pounding so hard, too hard in the quiet of his room, and looked Benji in the eyes. “For the record, I think who you are is pretty great.”

Benji’s anger seemed to melt away a little at that, a small smile turning up the corners of his mouth. “Thanks. I, uh, hope you like the present I brought.”

“Oh, you didn’t have to get me anything.”

Benji just shrugged. “It’s nothing much.”

There was a knock on the door, and Victor went to open it. His mother stood there, looking harried and a little surprised to find Victor and Benji alone in his bedroom.

“Honey, the food’s ready and Felix just got back with the cakes,” she said. “Let’s round everybody up for lunch, all right?”

He ran into Mia on the way outside, and she pulled him aside in the hallway with a polite smile at Benji who continued to the patio without them.

“Did I do something to upset your mom?” Mia asked, her brows furrowed. “She’s been so… prickly.”

Victor took her hand and gave it a little squeeze. “It’s not you. She’s just really stressed out about the party and trying to impress my grandmother. I’m sorry if she’s been weird around you today, but try not to take it personally, okay? I think she really likes you.”

“Okay,” Mia said, nodding slowly. “I just wondered if it was something I said. I’m, um, not really used to being around a mom anymore. It’s kind of hard for me, talking with her, but I really want her to like me.”

Victor gave her a little kiss on the cheek. “Who wouldn’t like you?”

Lunch was a mix of Texan barbecue staples like brisket and ribs and his mom’s Puerto Rican style home cooking. Victor sat in some lawn chairs with his friends, Mia at his side, and Benji across from them, looking a little more relaxed now. For a brief thirty minutes everything seemed to finally be going well.

His mom brought out one of the cakes, glowing with an array of candles, and everyone sang to him. Adrian called out, “Victor, make a wish!” so Victor smiled, his eyes moving between Mia and Benji standing next to each other nearby, and leaned forward to blow out the flames. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d wished for in that moment. All he knew was that when he looked at them, his heart was full of some emotion, something he couldn’t quite name just yet, but that he wanted to hold onto.

As they were all digging into the cake, he heard his grandmother say, “This isn’t _my_ _tres leches_ recipe. What recipe did you use, Isabel?”

Before his mother had a chance to reply, Adrian giggled loudly and swished his wand a little too enthusiastically. It slipped out of his hand and flew through the air, landing right in Tia Kati’s lap and causing her to splash her iced tea all over herself and Tito.

Tito stood up abruptly, grabbing the toy and tossing it angrily into one of the garbage cans near the table. “I’ve had it with that thing! No more _fairy_ toys!”

Adrian gasped, his eyes filling up with tears, and was too upset to move forward and retrieve his wand. Victor had had enough.

 _“No!”_ he shouted, jumping to his feet and startling himself and everyone around him with how loud his voice was. “No, you don’t get to talk to Adrian like that, and you can’t say that stuff in front of my friends, either. If you don’t like people just being who they are, that’s your problem, not mine, and not anyone else’s!”

Tito stared at him in shock, and then Abuela Nati turned to Isabel to demand, “This is the way you teach him to talk to his grandfather?”

Isabel’s eyes flashed and Victor could tell that this was the final straw for her. “As a matter of fact, it is. I raised my son to stand up for the people he loves, and to speak his mind. And since we’re being true to ourselves, my _tres leches_ cake was garbage so I threw it out. Nothing I ever do is going to be good enough for you, so why should I keep working myself to the bone trying? I do my best, Natalia, every single day for this family, and I’m sorry if that’s not enough!”

Armando finally stood up, coming to stand beside his wife. “No, it _is_ enough. Isabel is an amazing mother to our kids and she is doing everything she can to raise them to be good people. You need to give her a break, _Mami_ , and Dad, you have to stop talking to Adrian the way you have been.”

Nati shook her head sadly. “This is hard for us, _mijo._ Everything is changing these days, Pilar is not behaving like a… like a nice young lady, and you let your boys do whatever they want. Do you think anyone could have spoken to my father that way? Absolutely not. I feel like we can’t understand any of you.”

“Just because things are changing, doesn’t mean they’re getting worse,” Pilar said, surprising everyone by speaking up. “Our parents are trying to do what’s best for our family, _abuelita_. You of all people should understand that. It’s why you left Colombia.”

Their grandparents fell silent at that, exchanging a glance, and for a moment no one in the backyard said anything. Then one of the twins, Victor thought it was Diego, went over to the trash can and retrieved the Elsa wand. He wiped it off on his shorts, to Tia Kati’s dismay, and then walked over to hand it to Adrian.

“Come on, let’s play Frozen. You be Elsa and freeze everybody!” Diego said. Adrian looked uncertain.

“Yeah,” Armando said, smiling, “Come and get me!”

Adrian laughed, swishing the wand at Armando and Isabel and shouting, “Ice! You’re ice, and you’re ice...”

Everyone posed in comically frozen positions, and then Armando stole the wand and ran around chasing the little kids with it, and just like that all of the tension disappeared. Even Abuelo Tito allowed himself to be frozen when Adrian won back the wand and waved it at him, making everyone laugh when he pretended to fall out of his chair.

When they’d finished dessert, Abuelo Tito, Armando, and Tio Sebastian came over to speak with him. “Victor, there’s a gift we’d like you to open now, while everyone’s here.”

Tito handed him a very small box, wrapped in blue paper with a slender silver ribbon. His friends and family all watched as he opened it, revealing a single key nestled in white tissue paper.

“What?” he said stupidly. Everyone around him was grinning. “Wait, is this...”

“It’s a key, for a car,” Tio Sebastian explained, “Nothing too fancy, but a bunch of us got together and found you something nice.”

Tito nodded, gesturing at Victor’s other aunts and uncles. “It’s from all of us, all the family. A young man your age should have his own set of wheels.”

“Wow,” Victor breathed. “I can’t believe this. Thank you so much, this is amazing!”

“Come on, want to go see it?” Armando asked, laughing at the shocked delight on Victor’s face.

His father and Abuelo Tito led him around to the front of the house, where there were a number of cars filling up the long driveway, many of the party guests following along behind them. There, near the road, was a pick up truck that Armando was walking up to, a dark blue Ford, and he couldn’t believe it was really his.

“It’s not too old and we had it checked out before we bought it, just to make sure it’s really in good shape. Figured a truck would be useful, so you could maybe help us out with picking up feed and stuff like that. So, what do you think? Wanna get behind the wheel?” Armando asked, and Victor nodded eagerly, rushing forward to unlock the door and climb inside. Everyone cheered and waved, so Victor rolled down the window and leaned his head out, grinning as his mother and Tia Pamela took at least a dozen photos. He was too happy to even feel embarrassed about it when Mia leaned up from outside the window to give him a kiss on the cheek and everyone shouted teasingly at them.

“Can I take it for a test drive?” he asked.

“Absolutely.” Armando got into the passenger seat, as Victor wasn’t going to go take his driving test until Monday afternoon, and then Victor started the engine and checked the rear view mirror, and backed out onto the road. His dad turned on the radio, some classic rock station coming on, and they both had their windows open, breeze whipping through the car as Victor drove aimlessly around the country roads.

He couldn’t wait for the moment when it would be just him, alone in the car, with the freedom to go wherever he wanted. It felt so liberating, this big step closer to adulthood, to true independence, to a future life that he still couldn’t quite imagine. In just a few more years he’d be leaving home, hopefully heading out to college somewhere, and starting his own life. What would that Victor be like?

Something about being behind the wheel of his first car made him feel like maybe he could start becoming that new Victor, that version of him that he got to define for himself. The wind rushing past, the pressure of his foot on the gas pedal, propelling himself forward… maybe that was all he needed to get to that future. Just a little forward momentum.

The guests finally went home and Victor opened his other presents with just his immediate family, all of them squeezed into the living room with piles of wrapping paper and bows scattered around. He got some new sneakers from his parents and some books from his grandparents, a handmade card from Adrian of him and Victor riding the horses together, which Victor was definitely going to tape up on the wall over his desk, a t-shirt from Pilar with a cool design, a box of pastries from Feña’s family’s bakery, and a nerdy board game from Felix. Perhaps best of all was a small, beautiful metal sculpture made of twisting, interlocked pieces of copper from Mia, with a hook on one end and a note instructing him to hang it in a window, somewhere that it could “cast a big shadow.”

There was just one more gift left, the slender golden package that he’d gotten from Benji, but he’d tucked it away quickly behind one of the pillows on the sofa before anyone could see it. Victor didn’t want to think too much about why he was nervous to open it in front of his family, he just knew that he was and he’d be more comfortable opening it in the privacy of his bedroom.

So after awhile chatting with his family, he gathered up his presents, wrapping the package from Benji in the t-shirt Pilar had given him, and slipped away to his room. He sat there on the bed, holding it in his hands, his eyes tracing over the little piece of paper tied to the ribbon on which Benji had written his name, when his phone buzzed with a new notification. There was a DM from Simon.

_Happy Birthday, Victor! I hope it wasn’t a disaster like you were afraid it might be, and that you had a great time with your friends and family._

_I gotta say, I wish I had a pancake making fixer in my life… But it sounds like you’re spending all of your time worrying about keeping other people happy and not really thinking about yourself. It’s great that you’re such a kind and generous person, but who’s looking out for you? You have a lot to deal with, from the sounds of it, with your conservative family, and your parents fighting a lot, and your sister having a rough time, and now Benji and Mia both coming to your house._

_What I’m saying is, sometimes it’s easier to focus on other people than on your own stuff. But you matter, too. Don’t forget to take care of yourself._

_Simon_

Victor read the message a couple of times, considering what to say, and was about to begin writing his reply when there was a knock on his door. Armando came in, closing the door behind himself.

“Hey, Victor, could we talk for a minute? About what you said to your Abuelo Tito earlier-”

Victor rushed to apologize. “I shouldn’t have raised my voice like that, I’m sorry-”

“No, no, it’s okay,” Armando said, sitting down on the bed next to Victor. “I think you were really brave to stand up to him like that. I never was good at doing that, you know? He was always pretty hard on me and my brothers when we were growing up. He was constantly pushing us to do better at school, to be better at sports… We were always so desperate for his approval, and I guess maybe we still are. And you were right, about what you said to him, about him being too critical of Adrian. I should have stopped it sooner, it’s not right for him to be making all those comments about your brother being too girly or gay or whatever.”

Victor eyed the small gold box lying on the end of his bed,, just barely visible beneath the new t-shirt, and found himself saying, “You know my friend who came to the party today? Benji? I, um… I lied earlier. Benji is the one who’s gay, not his brother. And I couldn’t let Abuelo Tito say the things he was saying in front of my friend.”

Armando’s eyes widened in surprise and maybe a little discomfort, but then he simply nodded, saying, “You’re a good friend, Victor. And you’re right. It doesn’t matter what some other boy does. It’s his life. He can do what he wants.”

Something fragile began to bloom inside of Victor at those words, something that he realized past the pounding of his heart might be hope. He could hear the breathless excitement in his own voice as he asked, “Really? It doesn’t bother you?”

“Yeah,” Armando answered, with a shrug.

A smile was spreading across Victor’s face faster than he could try to hide it, that delicate, hopeful feeling opening up just a little bit more. “Oh. Cool. I guess I just never knew how you felt about… that kind of thing.”

His father stood up, heading toward the door. “Sure, I mean, it’s none of my business.” He stopped in the doorway for a moment, looking back at Victor with a smile, and said in a half-whisper, “Just as long as your little brother doesn’t really turn out _that way_. That’s the last thing this family needs.”

The door closed, and just like that the delicate thing inside of him was crushed. He sat there in the stillness, heart aching, just staring at the bedspread below his folded legs. He remembered what Simon had said, about taking care of himself, and he picked up his phone. This was something he could do. Talking to this one person, this one stranger he’d never met and might never meet, this one safe person in his life… It was something he could do, just then when he was hurting, to take some of the pain away.

_I think you might be right, Simon. It is easier to focus on fixing everyone else’s problems instead of focusing on my own. My own feel too big, and scary, and painful, so I bury them underneath the work I do taking care of everyone else in my life._

_You know, the party had some ups and downs, but in the end, I think it might have brought my family closer together. Before I blew out the candles on my cake this afternoon, my little brother told me to make a wish. I know I wished for something in that moment, but I don’t really know how to put it into words. I guess, if I was going to try and explain it now… My wish is that this will be the year that I figure out who I am, and what I want._

_Victor_

Setting the phone aside on his nightstand, Victor sagged back against his pillows, his hands behind his head. He was so tired from the long day and all that had happened. Mostly he felt exhausted because of the way his father’s words had hurt some deep and vulnerable part of himself, wounding him in a way he knew his father would never be able to see or understand. Was this what it meant to be different? To bear the weight of your difference, and all the pain it caused, in a secret place inside of yourself?

Maybe his family would never understand what he was going through, and most of his friends probably wouldn’t either… but Simon would. His gaze caught on the golden box, and he reached down to pick it up. Benji would, too, wouldn’t he? Maybe… maybe Victor wasn’t alone in this pain, because maybe he was… _like them…_

Victor untied the ribbon, removing the little piece of paper bearing his name in Benji’s curving handwriting, and opened the box. Inside lay a drawing, an ink portrait of himself in his Brasstown apron, a cup in one hand and the lever for steaming the milk on the espresso machine in the other. There was a soft, wistful expression on his face that Benji had managed to capture perfectly, like the Victor in the drawing was caught in a pleasant daydream.

There was something so intimate about it, about the idea of Benji working on it, his pen tracing the curves of Victor’s mouth, mapping out the lines of his body. How had he done it? Had he sketched it out at the cafe, in some moment when Victor was too distracted to notice? Had he secretly taken a photo to use as a reference later, outside of work? Or had he somehow learned the shape of Victor so well that he’d drawn it from memory? He felt a heat racing through every part of him, carried along by the rapid pace of his heart, unable to tear his eyes away from the portrait. He was grateful that he’d decided to open it here, in private, where he didn’t have to worry about anyone witnessing the way this picture was tearing down all of the barriers he hid behind and leaving him stripped bare.

The paper in his hands felt like another key, similar to the one he’d received earlier from his family. The key to the new car, _his own car_ , could open up a pathway to freedom, to independence, to adulthood. And this key… maybe it opened up the way to making his wish come true, the wish he’d described to Simon. He couldn’t explain it, just knew that there was something in the fire it had lit inside of him, the ache he felt down to his bones, that recognized this as the symbolic key to figuring out who he was, and what he really wanted.


	11. I Wasn't Looking for This

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: internalized homophobia

A couple of weeks passed by blessedly uneventfully. Things were still tense at home, with his parents fighting as much as ever, and Pilar taking much longer to get past her break up than any of them had expected. She still preferred to spend almost all of her time either out of the house with her friends or locked in her bedroom with her music turned up obnoxiously loud. Whenever Victor did run into her at home, she would give him weird, probing looks, or make some kind of cryptic remark, and it had him feeling really on edge around her. He began to feel grateful for the days when he didn’t see much of her.

Aside from all of that, everything else in his life was going well. He went to his check up at the clinic and was given the okay to get back to playing basketball, much to Coach Harris’ relief, and they even won the game they played the previous weekend against one of their local rivals. Andrew had been true to his word, staying out of Victor’s way with Mia and getting back to a slightly colder but otherwise acceptable level of sportsmanship on the court. Victor and Mia finished their Chemistry project and got an A, and he’d been doing well in most of his other classes, too.

The truck had improved his life so much already, and it’d only been two weeks since he’d gotten it. He’d passed his driving test without any problems and received his license. It felt amazing to be able to drive himself, Felix, and Pilar to school (Felix was happy to let Victor have a turn being chauffeur) or to drive himself to work and not have to show up at the cafe all sweaty from the fifteen minute walk from school. Things at Brasstown were good, too, he and Benji becoming closer friends, chatting a lot during their slow periods and they’d gotten into a routine of sharing new music with each other whenever they had a closing shift together. Victor would spend some of his free time making playlists just to have something to impress Benji with, and he was forever surprised by Benji’s very eclectic taste in music, which tended to bounce around between old country/western stars like Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash and then suddenly shift to Dylan and Pink Floyd, and artists he’d never heard of before like Massive Attack or Sufjan Stevens.

And then there was Mia. Everything with her was great, except for the inescapable fact that the better it got and the closer they became, the heavier the weight of the guilt inside of him grew. Despite that, Victor was enjoying the dates they’d gone on, even the disastrous one in which he’d taken her to an art exhibition that had turned out to have trash and dead animals as its central themes. He had thought that that one was going to be the one to convince Mia she’d made a huge mistake in dating him, but then they’d ended up kissing in a quiet corner of the gallery and it had all turned out okay.

It was a Saturday, the day before Halloween, and he had the day off. He hadn’t been spending much time with Felix since he and Mia had gotten together, and Adrian had been having a hard time lately with all the fighting at home, so Victor had asked for permission for him and Felix to take Adrian out to a science museum in Dallas. Isabel’s face had shone with pride when he’d asked her about it, and she’d just said, “You’re such a good boy, Victor” and given him a hug before getting back to work on Adrian’s Halloween costume.

Even though Victor was driving, Felix had insisted on walking over to the Salazar’s house rather than Victor coming to pick him up. They were next door neighbors, so it wasn’t like it was very far to walk, but it was the countryside and still took about five minutes to get from one house to the other. Victor still hadn’t been to Felix’s house since some time during freshman year, and he was beginning to suspect that maybe Felix didn’t want him there for some reason. He was a little concerned, but they had Adrian with them, so he resolved to ask Felix about it another time.

“So where do you wanna go first?” Felix had asked Adrian when they arrived at the Perot Museum and got through the ticket line. “Gotta start with the dinosaurs, am I right? Or how about the space hall?”

It was the second time Adrian had visited the museum, so he grabbed Victor by the hand and began pulling him toward the escalator, Felix trailing them. “Minerals first!” Adrian demanded.

_“Minerals?”_ Victor echoed in disbelief.

Felix shook his head in amusement. “What happened to kids getting excited about a good old fashioned Tyrannosaurus Rex?”

The mineral and gem hall did turn out to be pretty cool, though. It was dimly lit with an impressive collection of gem stones glowing brightly in glass display cases, including one truly enormous amethyst that they all stood and stared at for a few minutes.

Adrian rushed ahead to check out the next display, and Victor and Felix followed along a little ways behind him.

“So,” Victor said, thinking about Felix’s odd disappearances at the end of lunch and how they rarely ran into each other in the hallway the last couple of weeks. “What’s been going on with you lately? Is there something up with you and Lake?”

The blush that spread over Felix’s cheeks and guilty way he bit his lip were all the confirmation Victor needed.

“Felix… Really? Why do you keep doing this to yourself?”

“Things are different, now,” Felix said, a little defensively. “Ever since your birthday party, or maybe since Homecoming, I don’t know, it’s like she’s finally opening up to me. I actually went over to her house this week, and it wasn’t just making out like before. We actually talked a lot. At least, until her mom came home and I had to hide under the bed, but uh, I think I’m starting to understand her better now. Her family life isn’t exactly perfect, and I think she’s under a lot of pressure from her mom to be the kind of girl her mom wants her to be, so I guess that’s why she’s been… you know, treating me the way she has.”

“Even if there’s a reason for it, it’s still not really fair to you.”

“Yeah, I mean, I know that, but I think things are going to change. It feels like we’ve been getting a lot closer lately and maybe she’ll be ready soon to really be with me. I have to at least try, Victor. I like her too much to just give up without trying.” Felix sighed. “We can’t all be lucky enough to have a perfect relationship like you and Mia, I guess.”

There was nothing Victor could say to that, so he just nodded. His relationship with Mia _was_ pretty perfect. Or at least, it would be, if there wasn’t something wrong with him that kept drawing his eyes back to Benji whenever they were in a room together, that made him feel sick with guilt sometimes when Mia smiled at him. He’d thought that if he could just make things work with Mia, it would fix whatever was broken inside of him. He didn’t understand why it wasn’t working.

After the museum, they dropped Felix off at the top of his driveway and then Victor pulled up at their house, surprised to see a sleek black BMW parked out front that he didn’t recognize. He assumed his mom must be giving a piano lesson (although she didn’t usually do them on weekends), and pushed the door open gently so as not to disturb her if she was. But when he walked inside, the house was quiet, aside from some hushed voices coming from the hallway.

His dad’s car was gone, so he must have been out, and he was guessing by the lack of angry music that Pilar was out of the house as well. He wondered if maybe it was someone from church visiting his mom. Sometimes the ladies from her women’s group would stop by for tea on the weekends.

“ _Mami_ , we’re home,” Adrian shouted. “We saw dinosaurs and gems and I got an ice cream!”

Isabel appeared in the living room a moment later, looking a little flustered. “Oh, welcome back, boys! Did you have a good time?”

A tall man with salt and pepper hair that looked very familiar followed her into the room a second later. He was in slacks and a nice button up shirt, and Victor realized where he’d seen him before: at the company holiday party he’d gone to with his parents last year at his dad’s work.

“Hi,” the guy said. “I’m Roger.”

“I remember you,” Victor said, slowly. “You’re my dad’s boss, right?”

Roger nodded, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. “Yep, that’s me. You’ve got a good memory.”

“We were discussing piano lessons for his son,” Isabel explained. “I was just trying to find some of my brochures.”

There was something really awkward about the entire exchange that was getting under Victor’s skin in a way he didn’t like. His mom seemed so… stiff, not at all like her usual self. He guessed that maybe she was just uncomfortable around his dad’s boss. Maybe she was worried about screwing things up for him at work somehow if the lessons didn’t go well.

Roger left a short while later, but the uneasiness Victor felt lingered for the rest of the evening.

“Victor! Victor, look!” Adrian squealed, running into the living room on Sunday afternoon in a furry brown reindeer costume, complete with a pair of antlers perched a little crookedly on his head. “Look, I’m Sven! Isn’t it _amazing_?”

“Wow, that is really cool, buddy,” Victor said, biting back a laugh when Adrian nearly tripped over his own feet in his excitement.

Isabel leaned against the wall, watching Adrian prance around the room. “I shouldn’t have gone for the polar fleece, he’s gonna get heat stroke out there.”

Although the temperatures had finally started to cool down, it had been back up in the high eighties that day. Adrian was already flushed, his cheeks shining rosily inside the reindeer hood encasing his head.

“I was planning on taking him into town in a little bit to go trick or treating,” Isabel said. “Do you wanna join us?”

Victor had homework to do, but it was impossible to say no to the puppy dog eyes and litany of “Please! Please! Please!” he received from his little brother. “Yeah, all right,” he said.

“Okay, who are you going to be, Victor? Kristoff or Hans? Or Olaf?”

“Uh… I dunno, buddy, isn’t it a little last minute to find a costume for me? I can just go with you in my regular clothes.”

“No way, Victor. _Mami_ is gonna be Elsa and I’m Sven and you have to be somebody, too!”

Victor raised his brows at his mom, who smiled and gestured at the cape and Elsa wand that were laid out on a chair near the door. Adrian grabbed his hand and hauled him down the hallway to Victor’s room, and about fifteen minutes later Victor emerged after somehow being forced into a pair of blue jeans with a blue button up shirt, an embarrassing silky purple scarf from his mother’s closet, a pair of his nice black shoes, and a white jacket that belonged to his father and was way too big on him. He barely looked anything like Hans in the baggy, mismatched outfit, but Adrian was happy, and Isabel was laughing, and even Pilar cracked a smile when she peeked out of her doorway to see what all of the fuss was about.

Victor drove them all to the town center, and then he and Isabel followed Adrian around as he ran up to one store front after another getting candy from employees in a variety of costumes. Trick or treating in town was a Brandon tradition, since trying to go door to door in the countryside was both exhausting and time consuming, and the local businesses got really into participating in the holiday. All of the shops had decorated for the occasion, some of them even constructing elaborate haunted houses on the sidewalk. He’d actually helped Sarah put up a Halloween display in the Brasstown windows earlier in the month featuring cobwebs and skeletons and a gigantic, furry spider that had been a real pain in the butt to get suspended properly.

After a while they ended up near the cafe, and Victor realized that Benji and Sarah would be working the closing shift tonight. Adrian rushed up to the open door of the cafe along with a couple of other trick or treaters, holding out his plastic pumpkin for more candy.

Victor stopped dead in his tracks when he caught sight of Benji in the doorway.

He was wearing a loose white shirt, with long billowing sleeves, unbuttoned down to a tight black vest he had on over it. His hair was styled to stand up in dirty blond spikes, reminiscent of Felix except that Victor had never wanted to run his hand through Felix’s hair the way he did Benji’s just then, and he’d added some long blond extensions to it that draped over his shoulders. The gray pants he was wearing were some of the tightest Victor had ever seen on him, making Victor’s mouth go instantly dry, with a pair of black boots. Victor had no idea who Benji was supposed to be but he also did not care. As much as he was scared to acknowledge it, he couldn’t deny that it was one of the hottest things he’d ever seen.

Aside from that time he’d seen Benji shirtless, anyway. Oh god, why was he thinking about that now…?

“Victor, honey?” his mom said, snapping him out of his trance. He blushed as he realized he’d just been standing there, staring at Benji, as she walked on ahead without him. “You okay? You’re looking a little flushed. I have some water in my purse...”

“I’m uh-” he cleared his throat, waving away the water bottle his mom was holding out to him. “I’m fine.” Victor swallowed hard, and made himself walk forward as calmly and naturally as he could.

“Trick or treat!” Adrian shouted, and Benji dropped a handful of candy into his jack o’lantern.

“Awesome costume,” Benji told him, “Are you Rudolph?”

Adrian rolled his eyes. “No, I’m Sven. Obviously.”

“Uh, right,” Benji said, trying not to laugh. He smirked a little as he looked Victor up and down, no doubt amused by the ridiculous outfit Adrian had thrown together. What the hell had he been thinking when he’d agreed to the stupid purple scarf? “And who are you supposed to be? Let me guess, Prince Charming?”

Victor couldn’t believe this was happening to him, with his mom and little brother right there. He forced himself to keep his eyes on Benji’s face and not the inches of fair skin revealed by his half open shirt.

“Uh, kind of,” he stammered. “I’m Hans. From _Frozen_. It’s, um, my little brother’s favorite movie.”

Benji said, “Nice” in a tone of voice that clearly implied he thought Victor was a total dork but he found him charming anyway. It wasn’t exactly the first time he’d heard Benji take that tone with him.

“I am loving this costume,” Isabel told Benji. “Bowie, from _Labyrinth_ , right?”

Benji grinned. “Exactly! Very few people have been able to figure it out tonight. You’d be amazed at some of the weird guesses I’ve gotten. I mean, c’mon, that movie is a classic.”

“Well, you look great. Not everybody has the bone structure to pull that off.”

Victor wished he could just drop dead right there. His mother was complimenting Benji’s _bone structure_? How was this his life?

A big group of about seven or eight kids showed up, pushing past them to shout “trick or treat” at Benji. “Happy Halloween, guys!” Benji said, as they walked away. “See you later, Victor.”

Isabel looped her arm through Victor’s, both of them watching as Adrian hurried on to the next opportunity for free candy. She gave his arm a little squeeze. “I’m glad you’ve been able to make so many nice friends.”

For just a second, Victor basked in the warm feeling of knowing that his mother liked Benji. In his mind, a sudden thought occurred to him, a kind of daydream of showing up at his home with Benji as his date, the two of them holding hands as they greeted his parents. The warm feeling from a moment before faded away just as quickly as it had come. There was no way his parents would ever welcome Benji the same way they had welcomed Mia. And it was a stupid thought, anyway, because he was with _Mia_ , not Benji. He didn’t know what he’d been thinking.

“So, no Mia joining us today?” Jeremy asked snidely at lunch the following Friday. “Is there a little trouble in paradise?”

Victor and Mia were eating lunch separately for the first time in nearly three weeks, both of them agreeing that it would be good for them to have a little time apart with their own friends that day. As much as he loved hanging out with Mia, it had felt like a relief at first to just have a normal lunch with his own friends again. Every time she ate with them, his friends would make teasing comments about how cute they were together or tell embarrassing anecdotes about Victor just to make him squirm. He’d been hoping that today things could feel like they had back before he and Mia were dating.

Naturally Jeremy had to find a way to screw that up for him.

“Everything’s fine, Jeremy,” Victor bit out. “We just want to hang out with our own friends today.”

“Whatever you say,” Jeremy said. “I knew this whole thing with Mia wouldn’t last.”

Matt glared at Jeremy. “Lay off Victor, dude. Why are you always shitting on him?”

“Come on, Matt. Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking it, too. Have you seen the way Victor gets all shy every time she like touches his hand or anything? I mean, could he be a more obvious virgin?”

Victor felt his cheeks heating up, in some combination of anger and humiliation.

“Stop being such an asshole,” Feña snapped.

“Yeah, it’s not like Victor’s the only one here with a lack of experience. I mean, Felix is still single, right? And Feña’s never had a boyfriend either. But for some reason it’s just Victor you keep talking shit about.” Matt leaned across the table, glaring at Jeremy. In the seat next to him, Feña shifted a little, looking uncomfortable. “If you have some problem with him, just say it.”

Jeremy huffed out an annoyed breath, but there was a tension radiating off of him that seemed to suggest Matt had struck a nerve. “I was only making an observation, man. No need to make such a big deal out of it.”

Alicia smacked her boyfriend on the arm. “Well, stop it, Jeremy. Nobody likes it when you talk about one of our friends like that.”

“Okay, whatever, I’m sorry. Jesus.”

“Anyway, things are actually really great with Victor and Mia,” Felix said. Victor knew he was trying to help, but he wished they could just change the subject already. “Aren’t you guys going out tonight?”

Victor nodded. He started to pick up his sandwich and then put it right back down again without eating it, his appetite lost. He couldn’t get Jeremy’s words out of his head. _“Could he be a more obvious virgin?”_ Victor knew that he and Felix were probably the only two in their group of friends to not have had sex yet, and it was something that the guys on the basketball team had frequently teased him about last year. They’d stopped since he started dating Mia, but now they joked around about how hot she was and how much fun Victor must be having with her. It felt disrespectful of Mia, and he hated it, and he hated the fact that he felt so afraid of the idea of progressing things with her physically.

“Um, yeah,” Victor said, after a moment. “We’re going out to some open mic thing tonight that Mia heard about.”

Alicia beamed at him a little too brightly, probably feeling guilty about the way her boyfriend had been acting. “That’s great, Victor! That sounds like so much fun.”

“Sure, if you’re into a couple hours of utter boredom and abominable talent,” Jeremy muttered.

Alicia hit him again.

The open mic night was at one of the gastropubs in town, a trendy place with an outdoor patio lit up by strings of overhead lights and a stage set up in one corner underneath a large tree. The crowd was mostly twenty and thirty-somethings, the majority of them probably college students, and Victor felt a little out of place as he and Mia were the only teenagers present. But it wasn’t technically a bar, so no one stopped them from getting a table not too far back from the stage.

The first performer was a woman with long hair that kept sweeping over her keyboard as she played and Victor had no idea how she could perform like that without it getting tangled in her fingers. She sang a couple of sad, slow songs that Benji would probably describe as “acoustic granola”, but her voice was pretty decent at least. If she ever made it in the industry Brasstown would probably add her to their playlist.

They ordered some appetizers to share and a couple of drinks, and Mia talked about her frustrations over her dad’s new girlfriend who she’d recently discovered was both pregnant and actually his fiancee. She’d only found out about all of that a week ago and Victor knew that she was having a really hard time with it, so he did his best to focus on her and be a good listener.

Mia’s difficulties at home the last week had made him feel all the more determined to be the best boyfriend he could be. They’d spent a lot of time together after school, at least on the days when he wasn’t too busy with basketball or Brasstown, and even then sometimes she and Lake would show up at his practice or the cafe. A small, guilty part of him felt a little bit smothered by how much time they were spending together, but for the most part it was really nice and he was glad he could be there for her while she was struggling.

In between performers Mia excused herself to go to the bathroom, and Victor took out his phone while he waited for her to come back. There was a new message from Simon waiting for him.

He’d been messaging Simon pretty frequently the last few weeks, and it was helping a lot, but he couldn’t stop feeling like both of them were tip-toeing around what they really needed to say lately. He knew it was his own fault. He was still too afraid to deal with the heart of his issues, and Simon obviously knew it, and was worried about scaring Victor away by being too direct.

There were still probably a few minutes left before Mia would be back, so he opened the message and scanned over it quickly.

_How’s everything going these days, Victor? Have things gotten any better for you at home lately?_

_Your last few messages have been all about how great things are going with Mia, but… well, if I read between the lines, it seems like you still have a lot of confusion about who you are and if you really want to be with her. If you do want to be with her, that’s amazing. From everything you’ve told me about her, Mia sounds like a really great girl._

_But if not, well… All I can say is that you should try to be careful, so no one (yourself included) gets hurt._

_You’ve mentioned a couple of times now that kissing Mia gives you “butterflies”, and there’s nothing wrong with butterflies, but for me, when I’m with the right person, it’s more than that. It’s more like those jet fighters that fly over the Super Bowl, or getting hit by a huge wave. It feels like it’s going to knock me off my feet._

_I’m not saying Mia isn’t the one for you, but maybe give what I said a little thought? The most important thing, as always, is to be honest with yourself and then your wish, about figuring out who you really are, can actually come true._

Victor didn’t have much time to process Simon’s words before Mia returned, but their effect lingered all through the next two performers, his heart beating too fast and his stomach churning with anxiety. This was the closest Simon had gotten recently to calling Victor out on the half lies he was slipping into his messages, about how great everything was, and it made him wonder just who he’d been trying to convince all this time.

So maybe kissing Mia wasn’t Super Bowl jet level exciting, but why did that have to be a problem? It felt good and they liked each other. Wasn’t that enough?

She looked so pretty tonight, in a lightweight sweater that hung low on one shoulder, revealing the graceful curve of her neck, and her curls were glowing a soft, amber brown in the dim light. Even though she looked a little tired and there might have been a hint of sadness in her expression, it did nothing to lessen her charm. If anything, it made her feel more real to him.

It was getting a bit late now, the sun finally disappearing below the rooftops, and there was a slight chill in the air. Mia was shivering a little, so he removed the flannel shirt he was wearing and held it out to her.

“Thanks, Victor,” Mia said, smiling with her eyes, and her hand lingered on his as she took it from him.

The emcee for the open mic stepped up on stage as the performer was exiting and said, “Let’s give it up for Joyce, everybody! Our next act is young but very talented, coming to you from Brandon High School. Please give a warm welcome to Benji Campbell.”

Victor stared at the stage in shock as Benji walked on, a guitar strapped over his chest, and took a seat on the stool in front of the microphone. He looked completely at ease up there, smiling confidently out at the audience, already beginning to lightly strum the guitar. He was wearing a dark gray Henley that was unbuttoned a little at the collar and just tight enough to hug the curves of his strong arms and shoulders, his hair in an artful state of disarray, a few strands falling to frame his eyes. He looked so perfect under the stage lights that Victor couldn’t pull his gaze away, not even when Mia leaned over to whisper, “Did you know he’d be here tonight?”

Victor shook his head in a daze.

“Hey, everyone,” Benji said, fingers moving constantly over the strings, drawing out quiet sounds. Benji’s eyes scanned the room and then froze when they met Victor’s, his smile disappearing as his mouth dropped open a little in shock. Benji seemed suddenly nervous, his fingers going still for a moment, losing the rhythm. After a long pause he appeared to pull himself together, swallowing and saying, “Um, this is… this is a cover I’ve been working on recently. I hope you guys like it.”

Benji’s hands began to work the strings again, with more surety now, and his eyes met Victor’s as he began to sing in a smooth, strong voice.

“I threw my wish in the well, don’t ask me I’ll never tell...”

The chatter of voices from other tables, the people in the crowd, the lights and the fence around the patio and even Mia, all of it began to fade away to nothing, until it was just him and Benji and nothing else in the world. Victor felt like he couldn’t breathe, but not because he was scared, not because the room felt too small. No, this time he felt breathless because it _felt so big_ , like Benji’s voice and Benji’s face in the darkness and Benji’s stare holding his were opening everything up around him, taking down all the walls, all the barriers, stripping away everything that stood in between them.

How had he denied these feelings for so long?

He wanted Benji so badly it hurt. There was no part of Victor that didn’t want him.

“It’s hard to look right, at you baby,” Benji sang, but contrary to the words he was singing he didn’t seem to have any trouble looking at Victor, his voice growing more powerful as he built up to the chorus. Victor’s gaze couldn’t stop roaming over Benji’s lips as he sang, his long fingers moving with speed and precision across the strings, the muscles in his arms that shifted under the fabric of his shirt. Had there ever been anything, _anyone_ , Victor had wanted this much?

“Before you came into my life I missed you so bad, I missed you so bad, I missed you so, so bad...”

This was what Simon meant, wasn’t it? Benji wasn’t even touching him, but Victor could feel it: that sensation, like a huge wave crashing into him and knocking him off his feet. He was falling so hard, there was no stopping it.

“So call me maybe,” Benji finished, and there was a polite round of applause, before Benji transitioned into another song.

Benji ended up performing three songs altogether, and was definitely a crowd favorite by the end. Victor had felt like he was floating through the entire performance, completely mesmerized by everything about watching Benji in his element. When it finally came to an end, the sudden rush of faces and voices and _Mia_ felt like getting doused with cold water.

“Wow, I had no idea he was so talented,” Mia was saying. Victor nodded, his voice gone along with his ability to think. It felt like waking up out of some kind of trance.

Benji stepped off the stage and walked over to the bar where one of the servers handed him a glass of water and he was able to put his guitar back in its case, and then he walked over to them. There was definitely something nervous about him, an odd tension in the air. After all the eye contact during the first song, now he was hardly looking at Victor at all.

It suddenly occurred to Victor to wonder why Benji had chosen that particular song to perform.

“Benji!” Mia said, jumping up from her chair to give him a hug. “You were incredible! I can’t believe how good that was.”

Benji grinned a little shyly. “Thanks, Mia. I’m glad you liked it. Sorry to crash your guys’ date, but I thought it’d be weird if I didn’t say hi.”

Victor took a sip of his drink, swallowed, tried to make his voice work again. “You were, um… You were amazing, Benji.”

Benji’s eyes met his, finally, but only for a second before flicking away again. “Thanks. Uh, I should go, I don’t want to interrupt...”

“No, it’s not a problem. Do you want to join us for a bit?” Mia asked. “You don’t mind, do you, Victor?”

Victor could think of few things that would be worse than trying to sit next to Benji right now, with Mia right there next to him. Before he could say anything, Benji cut in, “Actually, I really can’t stay. I’m meeting some people here tonight to talk about starting a new band. Hopefully they were impressed with my performance enough to take me on.”

Mia rolled her eyes. “There’s no way that didn’t impress them. Okay, well, it was really nice to see you, Benji. Good luck with the band thing!”

“See you later,” Victor managed. Benji gave him a little nod and wandered away toward a table on the other side of the patio.

“Wasn’t that fantastic?” Mia said. “When he starts a band, we are definitely checking out one of their shows.”

“Yeah,” Victor said. His heart was a tangled, thorny mess, aching with every beat, and he didn’t even know how to look at Mia anymore, after realizing how badly he wanted Benji instead. This thing with Mia felt like running headlong down a hill, like at some point in his race to escape himself, his downward momentum had taken full control of his body, and now there was no stopping the crash that was soon to come.

He looked over at her and thought, _I could tell her now. I could just open my mouth and say the words. Tell her that I’m not the person she thinks I am, that I don’t want her in the right way, in the way that she deserves._

But that downward momentum just kept him spiraling further along the path he was already on, and he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t make the words come out, no matter how hot they burned on his tongue, no matter how much Mia deserved to hear them. It was easier just to make excuses. _Mia’s had a hard time lately. She’s dealing with a lot at home. I can just tell her later, when things have calmed down a bit, when she’s doing better._

Victor hated himself for being such a coward. When this headlong, breakneck run finally hit bottom, he could tell it was going to hurt. And in that moment he was desperate to postpone the pain just a little bit longer.

Alone in his room that night, he wrote a reply to Simon’s message.

_Hi Simon,_

_I really do like Mia…_

_But what if that isn’t enough?_


	12. Brandon Nights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: some frank discussions of/thoughts about sex and sexuality, description of a panic attack, internalized homophobia, homophobia
> 
> Please note that the main focus of this chapter is sex, much like the episode "Creekwood Nights", but I don't think that there's any content here that rates above the Teen rating this fic is set at.

The night sky was lit up with flashing, colorful lights, bright as fireworks in the darkness, casting a rainbow glow over the fairgrounds that spread out below him the higher he got. He was bundled up in a coat, which some part of his mind found odd, since the state fair always took place in the early fall when it was still blazing hot outside. The gears in the Ferris Wheel whirred as they lifted him up and up, until the crowd milling below his feet dropped away into the shadows, and all he could see was the blanket of lights and movement surrounding him.

Somewhere down there, his family were standing together, watching him, and he thought that maybe there were other people he knew, too, his friends from school, Felix, maybe some of the guys from the basketball team. It was impossible to make out their faces now that he had nearly reached the peak of the Ferris Wheel’s ascent.

“Wow, we’re pretty high up, aren’t we?” Victor couldn’t seem to stop the nervous wringing of his hands, the way he wanted to desperately cling to the safety bar keeping him in his seat. How long would it take to hit the ground if he fell from all the way up here? It felt like the structure was growing, expanding impossibly as it carried him further and further from the safe earth below. “It didn’t seem this high from down there.”

“Are you afraid of heights?” Benji asked. He was sitting next to Victor, completely calm, in a dark jacket. His light brown hair and fair skin reflected the changing colors of the lights, flashing blue and pink, highlighting the perfect curves of his features in a way that had Victor temporarily forgetting about his fear of falling.

Benji leaned in closer to Victor, their eyes locked on each other, Benji’s hand just lightly brushing his on the safety bar. A bolt of desire coursed through him from that point of contact, lighting his nerves on fire, arcing through him with all the speed of lightning in a Texan thunderstorm.

“The trick is not looking down,” Benji said in a soft voice. “Just look at me.”

They moved toward each other, drawn together as if by some force of nature impossible to resist, and Benji’s mouth was so close to his he could feel Benji’s breath fanning out across his own lips. Victor’s heart was racing so fast, his eyes drifting closed, and he’d never wanted anything more in his entire life.

In the fraction of a second before they kissed, a tumult of noise erupted around them, and they both jumped back in shock.

“What’s happening?” Victor asked, panic making his voice shake. His hands clenched into fists around the metal bar, gripping it like his life depended on it.

Benji frowned. “I… I think they’re booing us.”

It was unmistakable now. Just like that, the distance between them and the crowd below vanished, and like a camera zooming in, he could make out every detail of his parents’ faces, distorted with anger and disgust, his father’s mouth open in a scream of denial, his sister’s cheeks wet with tears, his mother’s eyes dark with horror. His mind’s eye panned across the crowd in slow motion, taking in the faces of people he knew, Kieran Gallagher and Andrew Spencer, Coach Harris, Felix and Lake, Matt and Feña, Alicia crying into Jeremy’s shoulder, and there were his grandparents and his aunts and uncles, his cousins, and Father Hurtado in his Sunday robes, and Tom Davis, his mouth a twisted snarl, and _Mia_ , her face the picture of heartbreak, and all of them, every single one, were booing and screaming and staring at Victor with eyes full of hate.

Victor shot up in bed, sweat soaked sheets pooling in his lap, and desperately tried to catch his breath. His heart was beating so rapidly it hurt. He scrambled to get his shaking limbs out of bed fast enough to run to the bathroom, barely making it in time to slam the door shut behind him before he was doubled over the toilet, heaving.

“Victor?” his mom’s voice called out, and there was a light knock on the door. “Are you okay, honey?”

“Yeah,” he choked out, wiping his mouth with a wad of tissue. He tried to swallow down the panic and nausea. “Fine. Just need a minute.”

“ _Estas enferma, cariño_? I can make you some herbal tea if you think that’ll help.”

He sagged against the side of the bathtub, hanging his head between his knees, and for a long while just struggled to slow down his breathing and the frantic pace of his heart. When he finally emerged from the bathroom, his mom was waiting in the hall, a mug of hot tea in her hand, and Pilar was standing next to her. Pilar, who was staring at Victor with narrowed eyes, in which he could see a mix of concern and suspicion, staring at him in that way that she’d been doing off and on ever since Homecoming.

“What’s going on?” Isabel asked, reaching one hand up to press against his forehead. “You don’t seem like you have a fever at least. Do you think it was something you ate? _Dios mio_ , I bet it was those _taquitos_ the other night. I told your father they were too old to reheat…”

“Yeah, I think it’s just, like, food poisoning or something,” Victor mumbled. His mom began to usher him back to his room, and he gratefully climbed into bed again. She placed the tea on his nightstand and sat down on the edge of the mattress. Pilar was watching them quietly, lingering in the doorway.

“Do you want me to stay home with you today? I think Jesus will forgive me if I skip mass just this once,” Isabel offered.

Victor shook his head weakly. “ _No, no, esta bien,_ you guys should go without me. I’m just gonna go back to sleep anyway.”

Isabel looked reluctant, but Victor couldn’t even remember the last time his mom had missed going to church on a Sunday, and after a moment she caved. “ _Bueno_ , if you’re sure…”

“It’s strange that no one else got food poisoning,” Pilar said, a combative note to her words. “What do you think you might have gotten it from?”

“Probably just something from the cafeteria at school, I guess. Who knows?”

Pilar’s eyes narrowed even further. His sister was like a bloodhound sometimes, never losing her focus once she caught a whiff of something she deemed suspicious. Something like Victor and his strange inability to do something as basic as breathing when all the fear and pressure became too much.

She cocked her head to the side. “Huh. How weird. Don’t you pretty much always bring food from home?”

Isabel stood up, tucking the blankets in around Victor like he was little boy again, and pushed Pilar out of the room. “ _Mija_ , leave your brother alone and go put on some clothes that aren’t going to get you sent straight to confession. God, you look like Madonna in that “Like a Prayer” video, and that is _not_ the kind of church experience any of us needs today.”

Pilar stomped away, grumbling loudly, “I bet that reference would have been really cutting like _thirty_ _years ago_ …”

His mom shut the door behind him, and it was a relief just to be alone again. He laid there for a long time, staring at the posters and family photos and basketball trophies that lined his walls, listening as everyone else ate breakfast and came and went from the bathroom and then finally, _finally_ , left, a glorious peace settling over the house.

He listened to music for a bit to soothe his nerves, a band that Benji had recently introduced him to, and soon his eyelids were drooping in the late morning sunshine, and before he knew it he was waking up to a buzzing noise announcing a new message on his phone. He picked it up and saw a text from his dad, letting him know that they were all going out to do some shopping after church and wouldn’t be home for another few hours. He sent back a reply letting his dad know that he was doing fine, and realized that it was true. Victor did feel much better after napping, so he sat up in bed and drank the tea his mom had left him.

Stomach beginning to ache with hunger, Victor got out of bed and went to the kitchen to get himself a bagel and some water. The food worked wonders, and soon it felt like the nightmare that had so badly shaken him had lost most of its power. Although the details were still vivid in his memory, the crushing, nausea-inducing fear had faded away, and now it felt like any of the other nightmares that had woken him up, sweaty and scared, in the last few months.

After eating, he ended up back in his room, his door locked, sitting on his mattress with his laptop in front of him. He had the house to himself, which almost never happened, and he was a sixteen year old boy. The best way to pass the time was… kinda obvious.

Normally, Victor didn’t really watch porn very much. Not as much as basically every other guy he knew that was his age. The weird, uncomfortable feeling he got whenever he tried to watch it had been one of the biggest clues that there was something different about him. He didn’t like the salacious, exploitative nature of it, the way it looked both too fake and too real at the same time, the way the camera would zoom in on female body parts for so long that his own body’s interest in the whole thing would start to flag. Making up excuses for it was easy: Victor respected women too much, it was gross and degrading, it wasn’t right for a good Catholic boy to watch these things…

 _Believing_ those excuses was harder.

On the site he’d visited on just a handful of occasions since hitting puberty, there was a drop down list of categories, nearly every single one of them offering up women, women of every race, age, and body type, real or animated, alone or with a guy or multiple guys or other women. And then there was that one link, just one, that made his palms sweat and his body feel hot and cold all at once, labeled simply _“Gay”_ and he’d never once had the courage to click on it.

His finger hovered over the mousepad, hand trembling, and he came so close to finally doing it. But then the disgusted, furious faces of all his friends and family, screaming at him as they had in his nightmare, flashed before his mind’s eye, and he couldn’t do it. His hand jerked to the side, dragging the mouse to some random featured video, something with a girl that he knew, objectively, was very pretty.

The girl in the video shed her clothes, revealing the kind of body that he guessed most of the guys at school fantasized about, and stepped into a shower. Water ran over her tan skin, her long brown hair getting dark with moisture. Victor watched, tracing his eyes over her curves, and willed himself to feel something.

Several minutes passed, and still nothing was happening for him. _She’s just not really my type,_ he thought desperately, and clicked on another video, of a girl with fair skin and curly blonde hair, and then another, and another. Dark skin, light skin, slender, curvy, younger, older… _nothing was working_.

Then a video started that opened at a gym with a girl on a yoga mat, stretching in a sports bra and a pair of tight leggings, her long black hair pulled up in a ponytail, and behind her was a guy lifting weights. The guy was tall, with shaggy light brown hair and a strong build, his muscles flexing in his arms and chest with every rise and fall of the weight. In the foreground the girl continued to stretch while the guy eyed her hungrily, and finally Victor felt a heat start to pool in his lower belly. He tried to keep his gaze on the girl, but it kept slipping away to the man in the background, Victor’s mouth going dry as the guy walked over to the girl, bending over her, the camera zooming in on his ass pressed up against her.

A little while later, Victor cleaned himself up and slammed the laptop shut more roughly than he should have, pushing it as far away from him on the mattress as he could. He slumped back against the bed, squeezing his eyes shut tight, and tried to erase the damning images of that man’s body from his mind.

 _This doesn’t have to mean anything,_ Victor thought, and it wasn’t the first time he’d tried to convince himself of this, but it felt different now, because seeing Benji last night had somehow changed everything. He couldn’t deny the way he’d reacted to Benji, how he’d felt a desire unlike anything he’d ever experienced before.

Okay. Okay, so it was clear that Victor was attracted to guys. He hated it and just thinking that made him feel sick with shame, but it had come to a point where he just couldn’t deny it anymore. It wasn’t just Benji, either. There was the guy in the video he’d just watched, and Daniel last summer, and yeah, now that Victor was taking a rare moment to be honest with himself, there had been others. Boys at school or actors from TV and movies, guys he’d tried so hard not to notice.

But fantasizing about something, and actually _doing_ something were totally different things. Just because the girls in the videos didn’t do anything for him, didn’t mean a real girl, in real life, wouldn’t have any effect. And just because he fantasized about guys didn’t mean he had to act on it. He was willing, grudgingly and only in the privacy of his own mind, to admit that guys definitely did turn him on, but as Victor had learned from his research into these things, sexuality was a spectrum. He could like guys and girls. If he was bisexual, he could still choose to date girls and his life wouldn’t have to completely fall apart.

It turned out that Victor wasn’t the only one with sex on their mind. Later in the week, he and Felix were hanging out in his room working on homework together and listening to music when a text from Mia showed up on his phone. He opened it and immediately did a double take at what he saw written there, his mouth dropping open in surprise.

“What?” Felix asked, catching the look on Victor’s face. Victor, who was seated at his desk, just held out his phone, and Felix got up from the end of Victor’s bed where he’d been reading a textbook and came over to look at it. “’I miss your muscular legs’?” Felix read, the pitch of his voice rising with amusement. He turned to face Victor, grinning and waggling his brows. “Wow. She must really want you _bad_.”

Victor swallowed nervously, accepting his phone back from Felix, and stared down at it blankly. “What do I say?”

“You think _I_ have any idea?” Felix asked, incredulously. “My strategy with girls is to just follow Lake around and wait for her to drag me into the nearest utility closet. Which, actually, has been working out surprisingly well so far. Just show her that you liked what she said.”

Not knowing what to do, Victor panicked and sent her a thumbs up emoji. It sat there in the chat history, looking utterly stupid, and Victor wanted to kick himself. What the hell was wrong with him?

They got back to work, but a few minutes later a second and even more confusing text arrived. “Now she wants me to come over for dinner tomorrow night. But, like, this message is super weird. Do you think somebody stole her phone or something?”

Felix took a look at it again, and then leaned back, smirking at Victor. “Looks like _someone_ is gonna get lucky tomorrow.”

Victor’s anxiety rose about one thousand percent at that, his heart racing at what Felix was suggesting. Shouldn’t he be excited about this? Why did he feel cold all over with fear? “I don’t get it. It looks like an invitation to dinner with a bunch of weird emojis at the end.”

“Dude, either she’s planning on making you Eggplant Parmesan, or you two will definitely be dancing the midnight macarena tomorrow evening. You do know what the eggplant is supposed to be, right?”

“Oh god,” Victor groaned, unsure whether it was the resulting mental image, or the idea of losing his virginity, or the way Felix had described it that was more horrifying to him.

Felix frowned. “Wait, why are you freaking out about this? Isn’t this a good thing?”

“I… I just...” Victor stammered, his cheeks flushing.

“Ohhhh, yeah, it’s your first time, right?” Victor nodded awkwardly. “Okay, look, you just have to relax and it’ll be fine. Make sure you and Mia are both comfortable and that you talk about what you want, and that you have protection, and remember to practice enthusiastic consent. Uh, and I have found Youtube to be a surprisingly helpful resource.”

“You’ve been learning about sex from _Youtube_?” Victor echoed. “And how do you know all of this, anyway? Aren’t you still, you know, a virgin, too?”  
Felix blushed. “Well, I mean, technically yes, but Lake and I have uh… kind of fooled around a lot recently. And seriously, there are some great tutorials on Youtube. Don’t knock it till you try it.”

There was absolutely no way Victor was going to look for sex tutorials on Youtube.

“What have you… I mean, how far have you gotten with Lake?” he asked, twisting his pen around in his fingers agitatedly and unable to look Felix in the eye.

“Just, you know, like heavy petting, and, uh, oral,” Felix answered, face red as a beet. He ran his hand through his messy hair, making it stand up at even odder angles, looking both pleased and awkward. “We really have been getting a lot _closer_ lately.”

“Oh. Wow.”

So pretty much everyone he knew was moving faster than he was. He’d thought that at least Felix was probably still stuck at the making out level like him, and finding out that this was not the case just made him feel even more embarrassed by his own lack of experience.

Felix didn’t look at him either when he said, “So I’m getting the impression here that you and Mia haven’t gotten very far yet.”

“Well, we kiss. A lot.” Victor tried not to think about the fact that whenever they did make out, he was always the one to pull away first. “But, uh… yeah, that’s it. So far.”

“Hey, you got this, man,” Felix said, misinterpreting Victor’s hesitation. Felix probably just thought Victor had, like, performance anxiety or something, which was kind of accurate, but not for the reasons Felix was assuming. The truth was that Victor wasn’t scared of performing poorly; he was scared of not being able to perform _at all_. But if he wanted to know for sure whether or not women were a possibility for him, then wasn’t this the way to find out? He had a beautiful girlfriend who he liked immensely, and she liked him back. Enough to want to have sex with him, apparently, which would have been gratifying if he wasn’t so freaked out by the idea.

“Mia’s crazy about you, Victor. Just relax and you’ll do fine,” Felix tried to reassure him, patting Victor on the shoulder before he went back to his textbook.

If there was one thing Victor definitely wouldn’t be able to do tomorrow night, it was relax.

Victor’s stress levels remained at an all time high leading up to his date with Mia the next day. While he didn’t have any more nightmares, he also didn’t sleep well the night before, tossing and turning restlessly for hours, his body like a live wire. Going to classes that day was an exercise in futility. He felt like he was sleepwalking from one classroom to the next, never absorbing a single word his teachers said.

He had to work an afternoon shift at Brasstown before dinner at Mia’s, and it was hard to keep up with the busy pace in the state he was in. Midterms were right around the corner so it seemed like there was an endless line of college students pouring into the cafe, desperate for much needed caffeine. Victor tried to do his best to fill all the orders and bus tables, but his date was looming ever closer and his stress was getting worse and worse with every passing minute. He spilled the hot milk he was trying to steam, narrowly missing burning his hand, he mixed up at least three different orders and had to remake them, and when he went to clear away dirty dishes from an empty table, he accidentally bumped into someone and ended up breaking two plates.

“What is up with you?” Benji asked him, when there was finally a break in the rush of customers. “No offense, Victor, but you’re kind of a disaster today.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I just didn’t really sleep well last night.”

“Oh, okay. Well, you’re probably too tired then, but I was gonna ask you if you were free tonight after work,” Benji said. “I’m meeting some friends at a show over at the college. They’re showcasing local bands, so it should be pretty cool. You could come check it out with us if you want.”

Victor guiltily wished that he could blow Mia off and go to this concert with Benji, which sounded a lot more fun and a lot less terrifying. But he couldn’t do that to her. Like a complete coward, he’d already tried desperately to convince Felix to tag along with him on the date, and for a second there Felix looked like he might just do it, but then he’d said there was something he had to do at home that evening, and so Victor was just going to have to face this on his own.

“I’m sorry, but I actually have a date with Mia tonight. I think we’re having a fancy dinner at her place.”

Benji nodded slowly, his hands pulling on the strings of his apron, twisting them around his fingers. “Oh, cool. That sounds fun.”

“Yeah, _so much_ fun.” Victor tried hard not to sigh with frustration.

“Okay, why did you just do your uncomfortable scrunch face when you said that?”

“I’m just kind of nervous about tonight, I guess. I think Mia might want to take things to the next level. You know, physically. And I’m not… I haven’t…”

“Okay,” Benji said, with a confused frown. Then his eyes widened in understanding. “Oh, wait… you’re a virgin?”

Victor just nodded, embarrassed but grateful for the way Benji was so chill about it, not even a hint of teasing in his voice.

With a small, tight smile, Benji said, “Well, don’t worry about it. I’m sure you’ll be fine. If I can have sex with girls, then trust me, anybody can.”

Victor’s mind was blown. “You- what- but you’re-”

“Gay? Yeah, I know. But sexuality can be complicated. It took me a while to figure out who I was, and then I was doing everything I could to fight it, and well… you know the rest of the story. Anyway, the point is, if even I could manage to do it, then I’m sure it won’t be a problem for you. Especially not with a girl as sweet as Mia.” Benji stared down at his own hands. “I can… I can tell you really like her. So just stop worrying, and have fun tonight.”

Something about Benji’s words and the way he wouldn’t look at Victor made Victor’s heart ache painfully. He didn’t know what he was thinking when he asked, “Benji… why did you sing that song the other night? The Carly Rae song?”

The question provoked an immediate reaction from Benji, his eyes flying up, wide and startled, to meet Victor’s. His mouth opened slightly, in a little gasp of surprise, and then a dusty pink spread across his cheekbones.

But in a flash the moment was over, Benji turning away from him and saying too casually, “Oh, it’s just been stuck in my head lately, that’s all.”

The lie couldn’t have been more obvious. But Victor just nodded and said nothing, and then a customer showed up at the counter to place an overly complicated order, and he got back to work. He and Benji didn’t talk much for the rest of the shift.

Victor showed up at Mia’s house just as Lake was leaving. The blonde gave them both a flirtatious wink over her shoulder, calling out “Have fun, lovebirds!” as she went to meet her Uber. Mia stood there in the doorway wearing a short black dress made of a flowing, somewhat see-through material, and he could tell she’d spent a little extra time on her hair and make up, but just like always she looked beautiful.

“Hi, you look great,” Victor said, leaning in to peck her lips. Mia placed a hand on the back of his neck and added a little more pressure to the kiss, drawing it out longer than Victor had intended. When her tongue grazed his bottom lip, he pulled away nervously. “Um, maybe we should head inside first? Don’t want the neighbors to gossip.”

“Oh, yeah. Of course.” Was that disappointment in her voice? Victor didn’t have much time to think about it before she ushered him into the house. “Come on in.”

Dinner was homemade tapas, which Mia and Lake had put together following some recipes online. There was an assortment of different cheeses on little slices of bread, and spicy chorizo sausages, and olives, and skewers of shrimp and beef. There was red wine, too, but Victor only had a tiny sip from Mia’s glass since he would be driving home later and also did not need a repeat of his two week grounding from last month. There were definitely no eggplant dishes, Victor noted. That plus the house that was empty but for the two of them, and the dress that was a little more revealing than Mia’s usual style added up to Felix most likely being correct about Mia’s wishes for the evening.

“That was incredible,” Victor said, after they’d finished eating. He could feel himself sweating and hoped that it wasn’t visible through his shirt. He tried to force himself to relax and just pretend this was like any other date with Mia. “Maybe you should become a chef someday. You could specialize in deliciously unhealthy sushi rolls and spicy tapas, people would love it.”

Mia rolled her eyes a little. “Sure, it could be _Chez Mia_ , and every meal could come with guaranteed heartburn.”

“Well, no heartburn over here. A little heart _ache_ , maybe… don’t think I didn’t see you snag that last shrimp skewer right out from under me.”

She laughed and poked his arm with the discarded skewer. “Hey, you snooze, you lose at _Chez Mia_.” Underneath the table, Mia’s foot slid up against his and Victor fought the urge to tense up at the contact. Mia took a last sip of her wine, and said, “Hey, um, would you like to go upstairs? We could listen to some music or something.”

This was it. Victor could just try and make something up, like that he had too much homework to get through and he couldn’t stay late, or he needed to help watch his little brother tonight, or that he suddenly had a terrible headache and needed to go home immediately.

It was on the tip of his tongue to feed Mia one of those lies and escape, when he found himself drawing in a deep breath and saying instead, “Sure, that sounds nice.”

Mia led the way up the stairs to her bedroom, Victor’s hand in hers, and the quiet of the enormous house made Victor’s heart sound that much louder in his ears. Could Mia hear the way it was thundering inside of his chest? Could she feel the dampness of his palm against her own?

It wasn’t the first time he’d been in her room (that had been at the stoplight party when he’d had to forcibly remove Felix from her bathroom), but this time felt different from the other occasions. The lamps were covered with silk scarves, giving the room a dim, reddish glow, and the bed seemed so much bigger than it had before. He stared at it, licking his lips nervously, and tried to wipe his hands discretely against the legs of his jeans while Mia went over to her desk to put on a playlist.

A low beat, like the pulse of a heart, and the tap of a snare drum filled the room, the song Mia had chosen definitely qualifying as mood music. Victor just kept focusing on his breathing, in and out, in and out, one breath after another, anything to stop the walls from closing in on him. His whole body was beginning to tremble, and when Mia turned around she would see it, and she’d know something was wrong, and Victor had to do something.

Without giving himself a chance to panic, he rushed forward just as Mia was turning and pressed her up against the wall, kissing her harder than he ever had before. He thought about the video he’d watched at home last weekend, about the way the man in the video had taken charge, pushing the girl down onto a bench and kissing her furiously. The thought of that man and the way he’d moved his body, the way his muscles had shifted and strained, had a fire suddenly coursing through Victor, and for a few minutes it was really good – he was kissing Mia like he’d never done before, their tongues meeting, her hand in his hair and his on her hips – and for those few minutes he really believed he could go through with it, with having sex.

Then Mia pushed him away, rubbing the back of her head a little. “I think maybe we should take this to a softer surface…”

She moved toward the bed, her hand on his arm, pulling him with her, but that little bit of distance between them made reality come roaring back in, like being hit by an enormous wave of icy water. Mia’s body, as beautiful as he knew it was, wasn’t what his body craved. What was wrong with him, thinking about some actor from a porno when he was kissing his girlfriend? God, he was disgusting, there was obviously something seriously wrong with him, and he couldn’t do this.

Just like that, the walls around him felt like they were caving in and it was too late to stop it. If he didn’t get away from Mia as soon as possible, he felt like he’d never be able to draw another breath.

“I’m sorry,” he forced out, already backing away from her rapidly. His hand found the doorknob of the bathroom and he turned it with shaking fingers. “I, I just need a second.”

The last thing he saw before he slammed the door shut behind him was the hurt in Mia’s eyes.

Victor had no idea how long he was in the bathroom, hunched into a corner between the shower and the toilet, hands carded through his hair and gripping it so hard it made his scalp ache. That little bit of pain was good, it brought him back to himself, made him aware of his body. He’d lost time again. For all he knew, he might have been trapped in there for hours.

Mia’s worried voice came from the bedroom. It didn’t sound like it was the first time she’d called out to him.

“Victor.” There was the muffled sound of movement, like Mia might be leaning against the other side of the door. “Victor, please. Please just open the door.”

It took him a moment to stand. His legs were stiff and his knees hurt a little when he tried to unfold them. When he reached out to twist the knob it wouldn’t turn. He couldn’t even remember having locked it in the first place. He pushed the door open and Mia was right there, her eyes widening in shock as she looked at him.

“You’re crying.”

He reached a hand up to touch his own cheek and realized she was right. His face was wet with tears. Victor had never been one to cry much, at least not since he was a really little kid. He couldn’t even remember the last time it had happened.

Mia’s lower lip trembled, like the sight of him crying would make her cry, too. “Victor, what’s going on?”

They ended up sitting on the floor, their backs resting against Mia’s bed, close but not touching. Mia looked as though she was too scared to touch him just then, and he couldn’t bring himself to reach out to her either, not when he still felt so numb all over. Not when the self-hate and self-disgust were still strong enough to choke him.

He didn’t know what to say. It didn’t seem like there was anything he could say that would make things right. In the end he just whispered, “I’m sorry” and hoped it would be enough.

It wasn’t. He couldn’t look at Mia, but he could feel her watching him. She said, “Just tell me the truth. Whatever it is, Victor, I think I deserve to know. Are you, like, feeling sick or something? Did something happen to you? Are… Are you just not attracted to me?”

“Mia… You are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met. And I like you so much, I mean that. I really thought that… that I was attracted to you.”

Mia’s voice was flat, heavy with disappointment and bitterness. It sounded like she might be crying now. “…But you’re not.”

He hung his head, so full of shame he could taste it in the back of his throat. “No. I’m not. I’m not attracted to you, or – or any other girl.”

He’d said it. He’d actually told her the truth, the truth that he hadn’t even been able to admit to himself until that very moment. He waited for the feeling of relief to come, but it never did.

“Then what was all of this? Was any of it ever real?”

God it hurt to hear her say that. “Yes! Yes, of course, it was. You’re basically my favorite person, Mia. I honestly believed that I liked you _that_ way, that I was attracted to you. It’s just that I – I’ve been confused for awhile now, and… I don’t know, I didn’t really know what I wanted. I’m so sorry.”

There was a long silence. It stretched on for so long it felt like it might have lasted for hours, and it was so tense with pain. Victor hated himself so much for hurting Mia like this. He couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been.

“Victor,” Mia said, finally, her voice a little raspy. She’d probably been crying that whole time, and he was so consumed with his own fear and guilt and self-hatred that he still couldn’t even look at her. Couldn’t stand the thought of seeing the awful evidence of his mistakes. “I don’t care that you’re gay. It’s fine, you know that doesn’t bother me at all. But I can’t help feeling like you just used me to figure out your sexuality, and that’s not fair. That really fucking hurts, Victor.”

“I know. I know, and I’m so sorry-”

“Why didn’t you just tell me that you were, like, confused or whatever? It just feels like you’ve been lying to me this whole time about who you really are, and now you’re – you’re this person I don’t even know. A total stranger.”

There was nothing he could say to that, even though he was tempted to defend himself, to say that he was the same person he’d always been. But he knew that wasn’t exactly true. The Victor Mia had grown to like and chosen to date was the one that had been carefully crafted by his family and his friends and society and even by Victor himself, the persona he’d worked so hard to maintain around her and everyone else for so long now. She was right. He _was_ a liar. All he ever did these days was lie to everyone around him.

“Fuck,” Mia swore, letting out a long, frustrated breath. “No, no, that’s not fair. I’m sorry, Victor, I’m just really hurting right now and I want to be angry with you. I _am_ angry. But I get that this isn’t entirely your fault. I’m straight, I have no idea what you’ve been going through or how hard it must be to figure out who you are. I don’t know what it’s like to be confused the way you have been, so it’s pretty fucked up of me to judge you.”

“No,” Victor protested. “No, you were right. I made the choice to hide a lot of myself from you, and I think I knew all along that it wasn’t really right for us to be together. I just… I just thought that if there was any girl I could be with, it was you. I care about you a lot. You’re funny and talented and smart, and you’re so much fun to spend time with, and I wanted to be the person you thought I was so badly.”

He swallowed thickly past the lump in his throat. “I’m so sorry I can’t be that person.”

Mia leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder, finally closing the gap between their bodies. Tentatively, Victor let his hand come to lie on top of hers.

“Don’t ever apologize for being who you are,” Mia said firmly. She took a long, deep breath. “I’m going to need some time to process this, and that means that I won’t be able to be around you for awhile. I don’t know for how long. You really hurt me, Victor, and even if that’s not completely your fault, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. Right now I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to be your friend after this. I hope that I’ll be able to, but I don’t know. Either way, please just wait for me to come to you, okay? I need you to stay away from me until then.”

“Okay,” Victor agreed. It hurt so much to hear her say that they might never be friends, but he would’ve agreed to nearly anything for her in that moment.

The fact that Mia was being so mature about all of this, and so kind and understanding considering what he’d done, was a relief, but the roiling self-hatred in his gut hadn’t lessened.

Mia had said it. She’d said that he was gay and… And it was true. _Fuck_. It was really true, wasn’t it? Mia had never been the one he’d really wanted, as much as he’d tried to force himself to feel something for her that went beyond friendship. And conversely, all this time, he’d been pushing away the one person that he wanted more than anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more important note: I’d like to make it very clear that bisexuality is a real thing and the way I've described Victor’s thought process in figuring out his identity is by no means meant to imply that bisexuality isn’t real. Just because some people temporarily identify as bisexual on their way to coming out as gay does not invalidate anyone else’s identity as bisexual (or pansexual, for that matter). Unfortunately, biphobia/bi-erasure is still a big problem, and I would never want to contribute to it in any way.


	13. Dark Come Soon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: description of a panic attack, internalized homophobia
> 
> This chapter's a bit shorter than usual, but hopefully you guys won't mind too much ;)
> 
> The chapter title comes from the Tegan and Sara song by the same name.

Victor sat alone in his truck in Mia’s driveway for a long time, hands resting on the steering wheel, just trying to get enough air into his lungs to make the dizzying panic go away. He couldn’t think about what had just happened. He couldn’t _stop_ thinking about what had just happened. The truth felt like a stab wound to the chest, so raw and aching and split open, a wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding.

The time was nine thirty six. His curfew was midnight. He couldn’t go home yet. Not like this.

He had tried so, so hard to make things work with Mia and it had all fallen apart in the worst possible way. Why hadn’t he listened to Simon, or his own conscience? Why had he led her on and hurt her like that? In retrospect, he could see that he’d never really liked her the way he should have, and he’d known it, deep down, the entire time, hadn’t he? Simon had tried to warn him.

_All I can say is that you should try to be careful, so no one (yourself included) gets hurt._

What had happened tonight between him and Mia had ripped the answer to his confusion out of him and left so much pain in its wake. But even though the truth was there, lying exposed and bloody in plain sight, there was still some part missing. It still felt like there was one more piece to the puzzle, one more thing he had to do to finally just _know._

He started the engine and pulled out onto the dark street. The cab of the truck was hushed with silence, oddly calm, like the eye of a storm.

A short while later he pulled into a visitor’s parking lot at Brandon College and stepped out into the cool night air. It was late but there were still some people milling around between the tall brick buildings, and he had no idea where he was going, so he ended up stopping two different people before he found out where the concert was happening.

It turned out to be inside the student center, one of the larger and more modern buildings on campus. Once he walked through the doors, it was easy to follow the sound of music to an auditorium. The room was huge and dark and crowded, loud with the noise of the band and all the voices around him shouting to be heard. Victor walked through the maze of people like he was in a trance, no idea what he was actually going to say or do when he finally found Benji. It felt like his head was wrapped up in cotton, everything was so fuzzy, and the only thing that felt real, that felt sharp and in focus was the pain that was tearing him up inside.

The band that was performing finished their set and began to leave the stage to a cacophony of cheers and applause, and then the noise died down and Victor’s ears were ringing in the aftermath. He was close to the stage when someone moved and the lights caught on light brown hair and there he was.

“Benji,” Victor said, surprising himself with the volume of his voice. It cut through the noise all around them, and Benji turned to face him, startled.

“Hey, what are you doing here?” Benji asked. “I thought you had that big date with Mia tonight. How’d it go?”

Victor did not want to think about the date or Mia or the fact that they had just broken up because of Victor. Because Victor wasn’t, _couldn’t be_ , the person Mia had wanted. That _everyone_ had wanted him to be. He shrugged. His whole body was trembling slightly with anticipation and fear. He felt seconds away from doing something awful, like throwing up or passing out or maybe just running as fast and as far as he could. “Nothing much to tell.”

“Oh. I’m sorry,” Benji said. His eyes tracked across Victor’s face, brows furrowing in concern. “Are you… okay?”

They were standing close together in order to hear each other over the noise of the room, and someone bumped Benji as they passed him, knocking his shoulder lightly into Victor’s. That brief touch was enough to leave him aching for more. It felt like Victor’s eyes couldn’t stop running over every inch of him, his strong, lean body, the messy, soft strands of his hair, his eyes, his mouth. Victor wanted him so much. But he was so messed up right now, his head buzzing like a hornet’s nest of self-hate and anger and regret, so that his desire for Benji was all tangled up in shame, and he didn’t know how to separate the two.

It didn’t stop his eyes from lingering on Benji’s lips, though, and he couldn’t remember anymore what Benji had asked him, and the longer he stayed silent the more concerned Benji was beginning to look.

“Why don’t we go outside for a minute, get some fresh air?” Benji suggested, placing his hand on Victor’s shoulder. He could feel the warmth of Benji’s skin through the cotton of his shirt, igniting a heat that spread through every part of him.

Benji’s hand stayed where it was as he guided Victor through the crowd, and then the quiet hallways, and finally out into the darkness of the college campus. The November air carried a slight chill now, especially with the night sky above thick with clouds and threatening rain. There were curving pathways cutting through the dewy lawns, with dim lights illuminating the way and benches placed here and there across the grounds. Benji brought him to one of the benches near the entrance to the student center, tucked slightly behind a curve in the building, and they sat down together.

Benji had taken his hand away, but they were sitting so close that Victor could still feel the warmth of him.

“Did something happen at Mia’s tonight?”

Victor nodded, his head drooping, shoulders high and tense at the reminder of everything that had gone wrong. “I… I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“That’s okay. We can just sit out here for a bit, if you want.”

For a few minutes neither of them said anything. The raucous sound of a new band coming on stage made its way to them now and then as people came and went from the building. Inside of Victor so many thoughts and feelings were raging, twisting into a tornado of pain, fear, disgust, panic, desire, sadness… He’d come here to find Benji and to _finally know_ , once and for all, who he was. What he wanted. However much it hurt, however much he just wanted to run away from it all, _he had to know_. He couldn’t keep on living like this anymore.

“Benji,” he said, in a voice that sounded far away from himself, like it belonged to some other person, “that song, the other night. Did you sing it for me?”

“What? Why – Why are you asking about it again?” The weight of Benji’s shocked stare was heavy. Benji swallowed thickly, his cheeks flushing, and said, “No. No, I didn’t even know you guys were going to be there.”

“But you chose _that particular song_ , you learned it and performed it, because of me. Because – Because you’ve been thinking about me. Right? _Please_ , Benji.” He didn’t really know what he was begging for, just that he desperately needed Benji to want him, too. He couldn’t be alone in this.

“I – I’m so sorry, Victor.” Benji was looking away then, staring off into the shadows. “I didn’t mean for this to happen. I’ve been trying to ignore this, this _thing_ , but I don’t know if I can anymore.”

Victor was tempted to grab Benji and make him look at him, to see whatever was in Benji’s eyes at that moment, but his hands stayed frozen on his thighs, tense with the frustrated urge to reach out.

“What thing?” Victor asked.

“This.” Benji gestured between them, finally turning to face Victor again, the look on his face pained. “God, it really is just me, then, isn’t it? I’m sorry.”

“Benji, what are you talking about?” Victor whispered. Maybe it was cruel to pretend he didn’t already know. But he needed to hear Benji say it. He had to be sure. His heart felt like it was made of glass just then, too fragile to withstand being broken a second time that night.

Benji’s face was clouded with guilt. “I have feelings for you. I have for awhile now. And I know you don’t feel the same way, that you’re with Mia, and nothing can happen between us. So I think… I think it’s probably best if we try to spend some time apart. I can re-work the schedule, make sure our shifts don’t overlap...”

Fear gripped Victor hard. Fear of losing Benji, fear of having him. He was paralyzed by it.

“No,” Victor choked out. “No, you don’t have to do that.”

Benji just shook his head, and when Victor caught his eyes there was so much heartbreak there. “Yeah, I do. This is for me, Victor. I need some space to get over you. I’m really sorry.”

In some way, it felt like Victor had lost everything that night. He’d lost Mia and with her his last chance at a normal life, at being the person his family and everyone else wanted him to be. He’d lost the carefully constructed lies that he’d built around himself for so long, like some kind of armor that hurt him as much as it protected him; it had burned up to ashes in the wake of breaking Mia’s heart. He’d lost the future that he’d been told he should want, the one that involved marrying a pretty girl and settling down with her. Would he ever be able to do those things now, the way he was? Would he ever get married, have children? Make his family proud?

He’d lost so much, so fast.

Benji got up from the bench, shifting nervously on his feet. His back was half turned to Victor. “Maybe I should just go.”

He started to walk away and that was when the fear in Victor shifted from a paralysis that left him frozen in the darkness to a panic that had him jumping up and chasing after Benji, grabbing him by the arm, spinning him until they were face to face.

_I’m not losing him, too._

Victor’s lips crashed into Benji’s, too hard and desperate at first, hard enough that one of Benji’s teeth hit his bottom lip and left it aching, but it was still the most incredible thing he’d ever experienced. Benji’s mouth opened under his, kissing him back with just as much want as Victor felt coursing through himself, and for a long, perfect moment everything in the world finally made sense. God, he’d never imagined it could be like _this_ , that it could be _so good_ … Jet fighters and tidal waves had nothing on this, on the feeling of Benji’s lips moving with his own, their hands all tangled up in each other, Victor finally running his fingers through Benji’s hair the way he’d imagined doing since the day they’d met, and Benji’s curled around Victor’s hips, dragging them even closer together. Kissing Benji was like turning a key in a lock. It was the final piece of the puzzle slotting into place. Victor _knew_.

But then suddenly those hands were on his chest, pushing him back, gentle but firm, and Benji said, “Victor, no-”

Victor stumbled back a step, eyes wide, and _fuck_ this hurt so much. He spun on his heel and took off running through the darkness, ignoring Benji calling out his name, trying to follow after him. Victor was fast, and he was fucking terrified (of Benji, of being rejected, of the reality of finally _knowing_ ), and he quickly outran Benji. He ran until his lungs were burning and his legs were shaking and when he stopped he had no idea where the fuck he was, but it didn’t matter, he was alone and he could collapse onto a bench in the shadows of some corner of the campus and try to figure out how to breathe again.

A long, long time passed on that bench, hours maybe, he didn’t know. It was getting colder. Eventually the skies overhead opened up and fat drops of rain began to fall, soaking through the thin fabric of his t-shirt and making his jeans cling wetly to his legs. Victor made himself stand up and he wandered through the dimly lit pathways until eventually he found the parking lot and climbed, shivering and drenched and abjectly miserable, into the cab of his truck. The clock on the dashboard read twelve twenty six. He’d missed curfew. He didn’t bother to check if there were messages or missed calls on his phone, just started up the engine and began to drive.

Consequences be damned, there was absolutely no way he was going back home tonight. He drove aimlessly for awhile, until his hands started to shake too much, and exhaustion began to catch up with him, and then he pulled the truck off on some narrow old country road that led into a nature reserve. The gate to the reserve was closed, and he was shielded from the main road by a number of tall trees, so it seemed like as good a place as any to hide out for the night.

He slumped back in the seat, watching the rain trickle down the windshield in silver rivulets. The temperature had dropped a lot with the arrival of the storm, and he was shaking hard in his still damp clothes, so he left the engine running and turned on the heat.

 _I’m gay,_ Victor thought, and thinking those words felt like hitting rock bottom. His worst fear had come true and there was no more escaping from it. Now he just had to figure out how to climb out of the wreckage of this disaster and somehow live with it.

_Is it really so terrible? I’m acting like this is the end of the world, but…_

But wasn’t it? At least for him? It was one thing for people from liberal families, like Simon who grew up in one big city and now lived in an even bigger one, whose family had accepted him so easily, or Benji, another city kid whose mother was a college professor, to find a way to be gay and happy. It was different for Victor. His family went to church every Sunday, his father and grandfather had made it clear that it wasn’t okay for anyone in their family to be queer, and what would his family do if they ever found out? Would they hate him? Would they make him leave home? Would they ever speak to him again?

Worst case scenarios flooded his mind like a rehashing of every nightmare he’d had in recent years.

The one thing that might make it all worth it, the one thing about being like this that actually felt _good_ , was… Benji. Benji, who he’d kissed, and who’d kissed him back for a moment, and it had been better than anything else he’d ever felt in his life. It had been the answer to every question he’d had since his confusion had started. But it had also been Benji who’d pushed him away tonight, and Victor had been too scared to wait around and find out why Benji had rejected him. Hadn’t he just admitted to having feelings for Victor?

 _“…_ _you’re with Mia, and nothing can happen between us…_ _”_

 _Oh. Oh, shit._ Victor was so stupid. Of course Benji wouldn’t kiss someone that was already in a relationship with another person (even if Benji _had_ gotten caught up in the moment for a minute there), and Victor hadn’t told him that he and Mia had broken up earlier that evening.

God, he was such a disaster. He’d screwed up everything with Mia, and now lord only knew what Benji thought of him, running away like that. A quick glance at his phone revealed that he had a lot of missed calls and unread messages, most of them from his parents and Benji. He should reply, he knew that, but he just couldn’t talk to them right now. The thought of hearing any of their voices made him feel sick with anxiety.

But there was someone else he could talk to, that might ease some of the fear and pain.

He typed out a quick message, adding his phone number to the end.

_Hi Simon, it’s late, and you probably won’t see this… but if you do, could we talk? I messed up so bad tonight and I just really need someone to talk to._

It was just after one in the morning, and even later in New York, but a few minutes after he hit send a call came through.

The voice on the other end was just how he would have imagined it, warm and friendly, saying, “Hey there, Victor. It’s Simon. Is everything okay?”

Victor drew in a deep, shuddering breath, so grateful not to be alone anymore. “No,” he said, voice shaky. “Not really.”

“Okay. Wanna tell me about it?”

So Victor started talking, filling him in on the date at Mia’s house, the attempt at losing his virginity with her that had ended in disaster, the break up, driving to the college to hunt down Benji and then running away from him after their kiss. By the time he’d finished it was close to two in the morning and he felt so incredibly drained, but just letting it all out had felt cathartic in a way that going to confession had never quite managed to be.

“Wow,” Simon said, when Victor finally stopped talking, “you’ve had quite the night, haven’t you? I kinda forgot just how dramatic high school could be.”

“Yeah. I mean, I didn’t declare my love for someone on top of a Ferris Wheel in front of my entire school, but…”

Simon huffed out a little laugh. “Okay, you’ve got me there. But seriously, you’ve been through so much, Victor, not just tonight but the last couple of months, maybe the last year even. How are you feeling now, after talking about it? Are you okay?”

“I don’t know. I’m better than before, definitely, but I don’t really know how to feel about everything.” He stopped, sucked in a deep breath and tried to find whatever courage he could. “You were right, about me. I am what you think I am. I just… I hate it so much. I-”

Shit, now he was crying again, for the second time that night, even though he hardly ever cried. Where was all of it coming from? It felt like some kind of inner flood gate had been opened and now it might never be closed again.

“I just don’t want my life to be this hard,” he admitted in a broken voice that he barely recognized as his own. “It feels like all I do is lie to everyone, all the time, and even though I’m trying so hard to keep everyone happy I just end up hurting them more and more. I really… I really hate myself. I hate _this_. All I ever wanted was to be normal.”

“Oh… Oh, Victor, I’m so sorry. This process has been so difficult for you, and it breaks my heart to hear you talk about yourself like that. There’s _nothing wrong_ with you, you’re perfect just the way you are. If other people choose to reject you because of this, that’s on them, not you. I know things are really bad right now, that you’re hurting a lot, but I promise you that it won’t be like this forever. It’s kind of cliché, but it’s true: things _do_ get better, Victor. I wish you could see that. I wish you could see what my life here in New York is like, how being gay can be this wonderful, amazing thing that can bring you so much joy if you’d just let it.”

Victor couldn’t even begin to imagine what it was like to live as an openly gay man in New York City with an apartment and a boyfriend and probably a bunch of cool friends that were like you and understood you so well. All he could think of were campy TV sitcoms like _Will and Grace_ , shows that he’d always been too nervous to watch more than a few clandestine minutes of when no one was around. He didn’t think that shows like that were probably very representative of reality, but how the hell would he know?

“Could you, maybe, tell me about it?” Victor caught the time on the clock and cringed. “I’m sorry, you don’t have to, it’s already so late…”

Simon’s voice was firm when he said, “Victor, there is no way I’m leaving you alone tonight until I am one hundred percent sure you’re okay.”

And then Simon started talking about what it was like to live in the big city, telling Victor all about his boyfriend Bram and their roommates and the gay bar in their neighborhood with the amazing drag show they all loved to go see on the weekends, and the Sunday brunches with friends, and the Queer Center at his college that he volunteered at, helping to organize parties and rallies and little trips to the beach or the mountains. He talked about visiting the queer landmarks in Greenwich Village, like the Stonewall Inn and Henrietta Hudson and the LGBT Community Center, and going to the pride parade last June and all the fun and drama and hangovers that had ensued.

There were all these words and concepts and traditions that Victor knew nothing about, that Simon dropped so easily into conversation without realizing just how ignorant Victor was about this culture. _Their_ culture. It was Victor’s now, too, wasn’t it? Or it could be, maybe, someday in the future. The world Simon described felt so far away from Brandon, Texas, like maybe it existed in a different country on the other side of the planet, but the longer Victor listened, the more he wanted to find some way to get there and see it all for himself one day.

Victor laid down on the bench seat in his truck and watched the rain stream over the windows, his clothes warm and dry at last, and began to finally feel a little less broken inside.


	14. The Truth Hurts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: references to violence and infidelity (not described in detail), internalized homophobia, use of homophobic slurs (including the "f" word), description of a panic attack
> 
> We have reached peak angst people, brace yourselves...

The next morning Victor woke up to dim sunlight streaming in through the windows, washed out and pale from being filtered through the gray clouds above. The first thought that worked its way into his conscious mind was, _I’m gay. And Mia knows, and Benji has probably figured it out, and Simon knows, too. It’s real._

His heart was a hard, heavy thing in his chest. He didn’t know how he was going to live with the weight of it.

His phone battery was close to dead and the screen had a long list of missed calls and text notifications. Steeling himself, Victor unlocked it and scrolled through them.

The first few were from his mom, demanding to know where he was and what he thought he was doing breaking curfew again. Surprisingly, though, they stopped around twelve fifteen, and then a text from Felix solved that mystery.

 _Hey ur mom just called looking for u. guessing u r still at Mia’s? I told her u were staying at my place so no worries for now. How’d it feel to finally experience the love of a good woman???_ (followed by several hearts and winking emojis)

There was a second text from Felix, at around one in the morning, that left a creeping sensation of dread in the pit of his stomach.

_u should know tht Pilar just came over looking fr u. Told her u were sleeping but i don’t think she bought it… she seemed upset :(_

And there were a few from Benji.

_Victor please call me._

_Could you just tell me if you’re ok?_

_I just want to talk. I’m worried about you._

And finally there was one new DM from Simon.

_Good morning! If you need to talk some more, I’ll just be over here sipping a few dozen shots of espresso :)_

As much as Victor was dreading it, it was time to head home. He was exhausted in every sense of the word, emotionally and physically, his back aching from a night spent trying to curl his long frame up onto the bench seat of the truck. Fortunately it was a Saturday, at least, so he wouldn’t have to deal with school on top of everything else, and thank god for Felix saving him from his parents’ wrath. His mom would probably still be pissed that he hadn’t answered her calls, but hopefully he would avoid grounding this time. Honestly, he was more scared of whatever was going on with Pilar than his parents.

It took a little while to drive home, because his battery died and he couldn’t use the GPS, but eventually he made it back onto some familiar roads and arrived around eight thirty. The driveway was empty when he pulled in, which was strange for a Saturday morning, and only increased his worry that something wasn’t right.

He knew he should go inside and find out if everything was okay with his family, but he couldn’t make himself climb out of the safety of the truck right away. Body tense with anxiety, he sat there and stared at the house he’d grown up in, and thought about what lay within those walls.

Victor’s family loved him so much, he knew that. Sometimes they loved him to an embarrassing degree, his mom’s antics at his basketball games being the case point. And he loved them all just as much. Things weren’t perfect, with his parents constantly at each other’s throats over every little thing, and Pilar moody and depressed after her break up, angrier than ever at the world, and Adrian, nervous and clingy because even though he was a little kid he knew that things weren’t okay. And somehow Victor was the glue that held their family in one piece. He was the fixer, the one that swept in when things got ugly with pancakes and jokes and a bedtime story and made everything better. What would happen to all of them if Victor, the lynchpin keeping them together, were to fall apart? Would their whole family fall to pieces with him?

Talking with Simon last night had helped a lot to ease the pain Victor’s new self-knowledge had inflicted, but now, staring at his childhood home, the colorful world that Simon had described to him felt impossibly far away. Gay bars, boyfriends, queer centers, Sunday brunches, pride parades… what did any of that even mean, when he was still stuck here in Brandon, Texas? Brandon with its churches every two miles and its gun-toting, Bible-thumping, proudly old fashioned culture, where Victor had never even met an openly gay person until Benji had moved to town. Sure, there was that other Brandon, the rich, liberal, academic Brandon, but most of the time it felt just as far away from his life as New York did.

Whenever Victor found the courage to get up and walk through that familiar front door, he knew that he’d have to go back to being Normal Victor again. Straight Victor. Victor the people-pleaser, Victor the lynchpin, Victor the one who always lived up to his family’s expectations of him. Golden Boy Victor who was so heart-breakingly artificial it made him want to throw up. It was what he’d been doing for years, but everything was so different now, because now he _knew._ He finally knew the truth, and that would make the lies hurt so much worse.

But as much as he might want to, he couldn’t stay out there in his car forever. His family was probably waiting for him, and something might be wrong (why was Pilar upset last night? Why had she been looking for him? Why were his parents’ cars gone?). Victor took a deep breath, put the crushing weight of his mask back in place, and got out of the truck.

As soon as he walked into the house he knew that it was true; something was wrong. Pilar and Adrian were sitting on the couch in the dim morning sunshine, all of the lights in the house turned off, and a cartoon playing so quietly on the TV he could barely hear the sound of it at all. Pilar’s eyes were red when she turned to look at him.

“Victor,” she said, voice accusatory. “Where were you?”

Victor opened his mouth to answer, but she didn’t give him the chance.

“Don’t bother telling me you were at Felix’s. I already know you weren’t. He’s a shitty liar.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “So are you.”

Victor doubted that, considering that lying was basically all he did these days. He swallowed, told her a half-truth. “I was at Mia’s.”

Pilar’s eyes widened. “… all night?"

Despite the guilt eating at him like acid, he made himself nod. There was no way he could explain what had really happened last night.

“Oh,” was all Pilar said, sounding a little surprised, but she seemed to accept it. Next to her, Adrian was being unusually quiet, hugging Olaf tight to his chest and flicking his eyes back and forth between Victor and the TV screen.

“Pilar, where’s mom and dad?”

His sister’s face grew stormy, the arms she had crossed over her chest tightening. “They’ve been gone since last night. Dad – he got arrested, Victor. They’re at the police station.”

“What?”

Victor’s whole body felt numb with shock. He wondered if he’d heard Pilar wrong, but then she continued, saying, “Mom’s there right now, trying to get enough money together to bail him out.”

Were his hands shaking from nerves or just exhaustion? He shoved them in his pockets to hide the trembling from his siblings. “What happened?”

Adrian started to cry then, burying his face in his toy snowman, and Victor rushed over to him, sitting on the sofa with them and pulling his little brother into his side. Adrian wrapped his arms around Victor’s waist, his back heaving with sobs, as Victor rubbed small, soothing circles over it.

Pilar’s eyes were shining, but she didn’t let her own tears fall. She looked too angry to allow it. “I don’t really know what happened,” Pilar said. “All I know is that apparently he got arrested for assault. Mom wouldn’t tell me anything else before she left. But… she was acting really weird, Victor.”

“Weird how?”

“The look on her face when she told me where she was going… She just looked so… _guilty_.”

Victor smoothed a hand over Adrian’s hair, his mind spinning. How could this be happening? After everything he’d been through in the last twenty four hours, how was he supposed to deal with this on top of all of that? Wasn’t his life already difficult enough?

“This doesn’t make sense,” Victor protested woodenly. “None of this makes any sense.”

They all sat there in silence, watching cartoon animals chase each other around on the TV screen, the bright colors and cheerful music, even with the volume turned down low, so disconnected from their dim, gray reality. Adrian stopped crying after a while, sitting tucked into Victor’s side, Pilar on the other end of the sofa, and the three of them just stared blankly forward as one episode followed another for who knew how long.

At some point, Victor got up to plug in his phone and figure out something for them to eat for lunch. It was almost noon already and there wasn’t any word yet from their mom aside from a text Pilar had received in the morning saying that they’d be home as soon as they could. He heated up some tomato soup and made grilled cheese, and as he was toasting the sandwiches, a message notification popped up on his phone. He hurried to check it in case there was news about his dad.

It was from Benji. It said,

_I promise I’ll leave you alone after this. Just please let me know if you’re ok or not_

Victor was immediately consumed with guilt. He’d ignored all of Benji’s messages and attempts to call him since he’d run away last night, too wrapped up in the agony of self-hate and shame to respond. But it was cruel of him to just keep ignoring Benji like this. He owed him some amount of honesty.

The truth was, Victor was gay and he hated it, and he hated pretending to be something he wasn’t just as much, and he’d broken Mia’s heart and run away from the one person he really wanted to be with, and now his father had been arrested.

 _Not really_ , Victor typed into his phone. He hit send, and went back into the living room with the food, to sit in the gray afternoon light with his brother and sister and wait.

Isabel and Armando got home around six thirty, walking in the door silently and toeing off their shoes, hanging up their jackets, while Victor, Pilar, and Adrian watched them from the couch. Victor had never seen his father look more worn out. His skin was pale, hair sticking up in odd places, all the familiar lines of his face dragging downward. His eyes had a red, bleary quality to them, with deep shadows underneath. Isabel didn’t look much better, but there was something different about the ways in which the two of them were miserable. She wouldn’t look at anyone directly, fiddling with stuff in the coat closet, straightening her sweater… Pilar was right. She looked guilty. And Armando… simmering below the exhaustion was a deep well of anger. Victor could tell that everyone in the room felt it. His own body was tensing up in response, ready for the next bomb to drop.

None of it made sense. Armando was the one who’d been arrested, so why was it Isabel who looked so guilt-ridden?

Isabel cleared her throat. “What should we – what do you want to do?”

Armando stared back at her like he wasn’t really seeing her at all. “There’s no point hiding any of it, not anymore. We’ll tell them the truth. All of it.”

“What happened? What are you guys talking about?” Pilar demanded.

“Maybe we should eat dinner first, before we get into this. It’s getting late,” Isabel said. She was wringing her hands nervously, one of her fingers twisting her wedding band back and forth. She finally looked up at Armando, tilting her head toward Adrian. “I don’t want to do this in front of him. Please.”

Armando’s jaw clenched. He said nothing, just walked off down the hall to the master bedroom, the door closing with a loud thud behind him.

“ _Mami_ ,” Adrian said, in a small, scared voice. “Why’s _Papi_ so angry? Did he do something bad, is that why he got arrested?”

Isabel shook her head, her eyes tearing up. “No, no, _mi amor_ , everything’s going to be okay. Let’s just have some dinner, all right? _Que quieres comer? Puedo hacer sopa,_ mac and cheese, _pollo con arroz…_ ”

 _“Nada. No tengo hambre,”_ Adrian said stubbornly, and then he burst into tears. Isabel hurried over to him, drawing him into her arms. “I don’t want _Papi_ to go to jail. I want him to stay here with us.”

“Oh, baby, no, he’s not going anywhere,” Isabel said, and she was crying now, too.

“Just tell us what he did already,” Pilar snapped. “Why are you guys being so secretive about it?”

“Pilar,” Victor said warningly, casting his eyes towards Adrian.

She just shook her head in frustration and stormed out of the room, her door slamming shut a moment later. Everything was silent, except for the low murmur of voices on the TV and the sound of Adrian crying softly into Isabel’s sweater.

About an hour later, Adrian had been fed about as much mac and cheese as he was likely to eat given the circumstances, and then put to bed early. His little brother was so tired after the emotionally taxing day that he didn’t even protest going to bed before eight o’clock. And then one by one the rest of them gathered around the dining room table.

“Um, maybe I should-” Isabel began to say, but Armando cut in suddenly, his voice too loud in the otherwise quiet house.

“I was arrested last night. On assault charges.”

“We know,” Pilar said. “We heard that part already from mom. Who did you _assault_? Why would you _do_ something like that?”

Armando’s jaw worked, that simmering rage getting closer to boiling point. “Roger,” he said finally. “My boss.”

“What?” Pilar said. “Why the hell would you do that? And what does ‘assault’ even mean in this case anyway? What did you do, beat him up?”

Just hearing the name Roger brought back the memory for Victor: coming home from the science museum with Adrian, finding Isabel all alone in the house with his dad’s boss, how strange and unsettling the whole thing had felt. And now, his mom’s guilt. His dad’s anger. The pieces clicked into place.

Victor stared at his mother in a state of shock that was rapidly transforming into fury. “You had an affair. Didn’t you? With Roger. You _cheated_ on dad, with his _boss_!”

Armando gaped at Victor for just a moment before he whipped around to face Isabel, his features distorting as the anger bubbling inside of him exploded outward. “How the hell does he know that, Isa? You let the _children_ see you two together?”

Isabel was shaking her head, her hands flying up to her mouth. There were tears streaming down her face. “No, no, of course not! Victor just, he came home early the other day, when Roger was leaving. Armando, he didn’t see anything! _Amor_ , _please_!”

“I can’t fucking believe this. Here? In our _own house_? You told me you met him at – at cafes or wherever! You are so full of shit!”

Armando stood up so fast his chair went crashing down behind him, and for a moment he towered over all of them, his face dark with a rage Victor couldn’t believe his own father was capable of. Suddenly it was easy to believe that he’d been arrested for attacking someone just the night before. They all sat there frozen, staring at him wide-eyed, and then the moment passed, Armando releasing his fury in a loud expulsion of breath, turning his back to all of them and stomping off into the kitchen where he slumped heavily over the counter, his head hanging low.

Pilar and Isabel were crying. Victor felt too numb, too shocked for tears. He watched the hunched form of his father out of the corner of his eye and waited for someone else to break the silence. For someone else to fix everything for once. But no one spoke for a long time.

“I’m so sorry,” Isabel whispered finally, staring down at her trembling hands on the worn surface of the table. This table, where for all of Victor’s life they’d gathered together, for breakfasts and lunches and dinners, for holidays and birthdays and game nights. This table where they were now falling apart, splintering into jagged, painful shards and Victor was terrified that there might not be any way to put it all back together again.

“How could you do this to us?” Pilar said, low and hurt, into the suffocating quiet of the room. “How selfish _are_ you? Haven’t things been bad enough around here, with you two fighting all the time and making us all miserable? All you ever do is think about yourself.”

Isabel just sat there, staring at her daughter, both of their faces streaked with tears, and said nothing to defend herself. As angry and betrayed as Victor felt right now, he also couldn’t banish from his mind the countless memories of his mother, the labor she put in every single day to care for all of them, the way she loved them all tirelessly, with so much energy. There were the years of meals and birthday cakes and laundry and cleaning, the basketball posters and handmade Halloween costumes and so much more.

“Pilar,” Victor said. “Stop. Just stop it.”

“What? You’re fine with this? You don’t care that our mother is a cheater, and a liar, and-” Pilar cut herself off, breathing hard, her face flushed. A choked sob escaped her. “I am so fucking _sick_ of liars.”

Victor knew his sister was thinking of Isabel and Eric, that she wasn’t talking about him, but the words cut into him just the same, leaving him speechless with the pain they inflicted.

The situation was so dire that no one even reprimanded Pilar for swearing. Isabel just looked at her, expression pleading, “I never meant for any of this to happen. I was just… I’ve been giving his son piano lessons and sometimes we’d chat a little after, or just get together for a coffee. We were friends, at first. He listened to me, took an interest in my problems, and it had been such a long time since I felt like someone saw me like that… But, please, you have to know that I shut it down as soon as anything physical-”

“They don’t need to hear the details, Isabel,” Armando’s voice growled out, from about ten feet away in the kitchen. He turned around to face all of them. The look in his eyes made Victor wish he hadn’t.

“So what’s going to happen now?” Victor asked. He didn’t really want to know, but he couldn’t stand the uncertainty any longer. He’d spent the entire day just waiting to find out how bad things were, and imagining one terrible scenario after another, and he just needed to know what was going to happen to all of them so he could figure out how scared to be.

“I have to talk with a public defender tomorrow,” Armando said. “Roger is pressing charges. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I’ll probably have to take a plea deal, because we can’t afford for this to go to court. And I’m guilty anyway, I attacked him last night at his house. I – I broke his nose. Fractured his jaw.”

Victor felt like the man leaning back against the kitchen counter and describing, so dispassionately, the repercussions of breaking another person’s bones was a man he’d never met before, some stranger who had wandered into their home by mistake.

Armando kept talking in that flat, matter of fact tone, and god, Victor just wanted him to shut up, he didn’t want to hear anymore, it was all so much worse than anything he could have imagined. He wished he’d never asked.

“I’m going to lose my job, and given what happened, it’s going to be damned hard to find a new one. I don’t know how we’re going to pay the legal fees, or pay back Tia Pamela for the bail money. I don’t know how we’re going to pay the mortgage, or the utilities or – or any of it. I don’t know how we’re going to get out of this mess.”

As he neared the end of his awful speech, Armando’s deceptively calm demeanor finally shattered, his voice rising with panic and tears leaking from his eyes. Victor had seen his father cry before, during sentimental movies or when one of them had gotten hurt, on the day Adrian was born, when Kaylee, the horse they’d had before Elsa, had been put down. But he’d never seen him cry like _this_ , like he was in more pain than he could stand.

Armando scrubbed a hand across his face, shaking his head, and walked out of the room. Victor could hear a door close softly in the hall. It was so much worse than the angry thud from earlier.

Pilar was the next to leave, padding away without a word to anyone, and then it was just Victor and his mother, and he found that he couldn’t look at her, not when he knew what she had done. She hadn’t just done it to Armando, she’d done it to all of them. She’d broken them in a way that even Victor couldn’t fix.

Victor stood up, and went to his room, and left her sitting there alone.

It was early, not even nine o’clock yet, but Victor lay in his bed with the lights off just staring at the ceiling, tracing the familiar bumps and lines in the plaster, the shadows he knew so well from so many restless nights. He had a feeling this was going to be another one of those times when sleep refused to come. He’d hardly slept the night before, after talking for hours to Simon, and it felt like every bone in his body was aching with the need to rest, to just go to sleep and forget about everything.

The window in his room was right next to his bed, so when the tapping noise against the glass rang out, as soft as it was, it made him jump upright and peer out into the darkness.

 _Benji_?

For a second, he was sure he was hallucinating. This nightmare of a day had clearly made him lose his mind and of course it would conjure up the same face he always saw when he closed his eyes these days.

But Benji was _actually there_ , staring at him through the glass and tapping lightly again with an outstretched finger. In a daze, Victor knelt on the mattress and unlocked the window, sliding it open a few inches so he could talk to Benji through the screen.

“What are you doing here?”

“I needed to see you,” Benji whispered. “Would you just come outside? Please?”

Victor couldn’t believe this was happening, that Benji was really there, and it was so startling that he forgot all the reasons why he’d been afraid to talk to him. “Okay. Um, let’s meet in the barn. I’ll be there in a sec.”

Benji nodded and disappeared into the shadows as Victor closed the window. Some part of his mind was telling him that now was the time to start panicking, but he just didn’t have the energy for it anymore. Not after everything that had happened. So he threw on a hoodie and slipped out down the hallway. He could see his mom on the sofa near the front door, just sitting there, curled up next to the lamp. He couldn’t tell what she was doing, didn’t really want to know if she was still crying. He moved as silently as he could to the back door and crept outside.

A chill hung in the air and the ground under his feet squelched noisily from the rainstorm the day before. It was so dark out there, the only light coming from the kitchen windows, and there was just a single, dim lantern illuminating the inside of the barn, switched on for the sake of Beau and Elsa who were tucked away in their stalls. When he slipped inside, he found Benji standing over by the horses, stroking a hand over Beau’s mane, and he hadn’t noticed Victor’s presence yet. Victor stopped for a moment just to watch him.

Benji was turned slightly away from Victor, standing in profile, and the pale yellow electric light outlined his features sharply against the shadows. Victor ran his gaze over those prominent cheekbones and the straight line of his nose, the smooth curve of his jaw, the column of his neck, and his lips… those lips that Victor had watched and dreamt of and finally touched with his own.

He wanted so badly to cross the distance separating them and do it again.

Everything hurt so much. It felt like his pain was an avalanche that had slammed into him out of nowhere, impossibly fast and brutal, sweeping his entire life off course. He couldn’t think clearly, couldn’t deal with all the anger and bullshit and exhaustion, the fear, the shame, the memories of his parents’ and Pilar’s faces around the dining room table earlier that night, all of them hurting so much, and Mia, the way she’d looked at him yesterday, like he’d just broken her heart. Worst of all was the fact that he knew the truth about himself now and what he’d feared for so long had been right: it was ruining everything, but he was too tired to fight it anymore, he just wanted to give in, to self-destruct. His life was burning down around him and all he wanted to do now was throw gasoline on the fire.

Before Victor knew what he was doing, he was already striding forward, moving right up into Benji’s space, pressing him back against the nearest wall. He cupped Benji’s face in his hands and leaned in and kissed him, with all the desperation he was feeling; the desperation to forget, to ease the pain, to surrender to everything he’d been fighting so hard against.

Benji’s hands on his shoulders pushed him back. “Victor, stop. We can’t-”

“I broke up with Mia,” Victor blurted out.

Benji’s eyes widened. “What? When?”

“Last night. Before I came to find you.” Victor moved in close again, reaching out for Benji, “So please, _please_ just-”

He kissed Benji again, and this time Benji let him. Victor’s mouth moved with a hard, hungry pressure, like kissing Benji would either save him or destroy him, and he didn’t care anymore which one it would be. And for a minute, it seemed to be working. All he could feel was the heat of Benji’s skin, Benji’s hand on the back of his neck, Benji’s chest pressed flush against his own, and god, it was incredible. It was like he’d never kissed before kissing Benji, all those soft, sweet, too gentle kisses he’d shared with girls a million miles away from this. With Mia he’d always drawn back so quickly, but now, with Benji, he couldn’t get close enough. One of his hands was curled around Benji’s hip, the other buried in his hair, holding him tight against himself.

The world was just them for that long moment, just them in the semi-darkness of the barn, the sweet smell of hay mixed with dust and dry wood fading away until it was barely noticeable with Benji so close, with the warm, addictive smell of him clouding Victor’s head. Benji was everything, everywhere, filling up his mind and his body and his heart. In that moment, there was nothing else.

Then Benji broke away from him, leaning his head back against the wall, cheeks flushed, lips red, his eyes all pupil as he stared at Victor and tried to catch his breath. He’d never looked more beautiful, and Victor just wanted to lean into him again, but Benji disentangled himself from Victor’s arms, taking a step back and away, his hand coming up to push through his messy hair.

“What – Victor, what is going on? I came here to talk to you, to make sure you were okay, not to-” Benji cut himself off, looking frustrated as the haze of desire between them faded somewhat. “You never replied to me last night, and you just – just _ran away_ from me, I didn’t what to do, I had no idea if you were even all right…”

The accusation in Benji’s voice, the way he was watching Victor, wary and upset, broke the spell that had held all of Victor’s pain at bay. He swallowed thickly, his throat suddenly raw and aching, and when he spoke he could hear the tremor in his voice. “I’m not. I’m not all right. God, Benji, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry… Everything is so fucked up right now, I don’t know what I’m doing…”

Victor felt his knees buckle and he slumped down, sitting hunched against the wall, face in his hands, and it was coming on again, that pressure, that vise around his lungs that made it so impossible to breathe, to think, to do anything at all. Everything fell away into the darkness edging his vision, his reality narrowing to the skin of his palms, the sliver of denim he could see between his fingers. It was all falling apart. Victor was falling apart and there was nothing he could do to prevent it.

Time stopped for awhile. Sensation, sound, smell, all of it stopped. He had no idea how long it lasted before he started to hear something through the foggy, wet cotton feeling in his head.

“Just breathe, Victor. I’m here, I’ll help you, okay? Listen to me. Breathe in, one, two, three… that’s good, now breathe out, one, two…”

Each lungful of air was a little longer, a little deeper, each one helping to bring him back into his body. The wall of the barn was rough and hard against his back. His hands were wet. Had he been crying? The air was cold. There was hay scratching against the skin of his ankle, making it itch.

He could hear Benji’s voice, counting.

Victor lifted his head out of his hands at last, and even the pale light of the lantern overhead seemed too bright at first. He blinked, trying to make sense of where he was. He was sitting on the floor in the barn, with Benji in front of him, and Benji was watching him with a softness in his gaze, some combination of concern and sympathy.

“I – I think I’m feeling better now,” Victor said. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened…”

Benji placed a hand on Victor’s wrist. His skin felt warm, a little rough with calluses. “You had a panic attack, Victor. Has this ever happened to you before?”

Victor nodded. He didn’t want to admit how often it had happened, especially this year, since meeting Daniel at Camp Lewis, since he’d started to feel something for Benji, since he’d begun to realize what he was. They’d been getting more and more frequent. Embarrassment began to creep over him, making his cheeks feel hot. Benji had seen him freaking out, probably crying, falling apart like a crazy person or a scared child…

But then Benji said, “I used to get them, too, back before I came out. And even for a while after that. It helps to know what it is, how to deal with it.”

Benji’s admission eased some of his discomfort, but he couldn’t escape all of the shame he felt as he remembered everything he’d done since the concert last night. Benji must think that he was completely insane, kissing him and running away and refusing to respond to his texts, and then just grabbing him again earlier without even saying anything, and then having a – a _panic attack_ afterward. He was such a fucking mess.

“I’m sorry. About everything.” Victor rubbed at his wet face with his hand. “I get it if you just wanna leave. If you don’t want to see me again after this.”

“What? Victor, no. I wasn’t exactly happy about you just disappearing on me, but I’m not going anywhere. I told you before, I was a total disaster before I got my shit together. You think _I_ have any right to judge you?” Benji shook his head at him, smiling ruefully. “At least you didn’t drive through a building last night. It could be worse.”

Benji’s ability to crack a joke about his own tortured past shocked a little laugh out of Victor, and it eased some of the hurt inside him, left him feeling a little warmer.

Benji shifted over to sit next to Victor and put an arm around his shoulders, drawing Victor in close against his side. Benji’s voice was soft, gentle, near Victor’s ear. “Wanna tell me what’s going on with you?”

“I, uh. I’ve been confused. For a long time,” Victor started. His heart was beating just a fraction too fast, but mostly he felt worn out. Too tired to be scared anymore. It helped that it was so dark here in the barn and that he and Benji were sitting side by side, so Victor could just stare at the dusty floorboards as he spoke. “Last night I went to Mia’s house, and we ate dinner, and then we went up to her room… and I thought I could do it, I thought maybe I liked her enough to make it work, but – but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do it, because I’m – I’m-”

Benji’s fingers tightened around his shoulder. “It’s okay, Victor. You shouldn’t say it unless you’re ready.”

He wanted to take the out that Benji was offering, but he was so sick of all the hiding and lying and running. There was no one else here but them, and they both already knew, didn’t they?

“I couldn’t do it,” Victor repeated, and finally spoke the words into the safe space that the two of them had carved out in the darkness of the barn. “Because I’m gay.”

Benji’s arm on his shoulders tugged him inward, pulling Victor into a hug that was warm and strong, holding him until Victor’s heart calmed, his breathing slowed, and the relief that he had wished for and hadn’t gotten when he’d told Mia finally came. _I said it. I finally said the words out loud_. He pressed his face into the crook of Benji’s neck, breathed him in, and it felt like some enormous burden had been lifted from his back. How had he carried that weight for so long? How had he been able to stand it?

He wanted to tell himself that everything would be fine now but it wasn’t true. Everything was still so fucked up. Nothing was okay. His family was still broken, he’d still hurt Mia so badly that she might not ever want to be close to him again, and he would still have to go through life with his mask in place because he wasn’t ready for the rest of the world to know about him. The very thought of it made him cling just a little tighter to Benji, made him wish that they could just stay here forever, so he’d never have to go back out there and look everyone he knew in the face and lie to them all.

“I hate it,” Victor whispered into Benji’s skin, “I hate it so much. I never wanted to be like this.”

“I know. I felt that way, too, at first. But that will change.” Benji released him, and Victor reluctantly moved away a little, until they were sitting side by side, Victor tucked up under Benji’s arm, like before. “I know it’s hard to believe it right now, but with a little time, you can learn to like this part of yourself. Love it even. It’s not being gay that makes life difficult. It’s the rest of the world, telling us there’s something wrong with us when there isn’t. There’s nothing wrong with you, Victor. You get that, right?”

Victor bit his lower lip, unable to say anything. His eyes were burning, and he was afraid he might cry again, and he didn’t want Benji to see him like that.

Benji sighed. “Fine. Well, I’ll just keep telling you that until you believe it, okay?”

“I wish I could believe it. I really want to. I just – I don’t, not yet. I’m so afraid that this is going to ruin everything, and my life is already such a mess. I really screwed things up with Mia and I don’t know if we’ll ever be the same again, after this. She probably won’t want anything to do with me after I led her on for so long. And then, when I came home today, I found out that… that my dad got arrested last night, for assault, because my mom was having an affair with my dad’s boss and my dad went over there and, like, broke his jaw. And now this guy is pressing charges against my dad, and I don’t know what’s going to happen to all of us, I don’t know how we’re going to survive this.”

“Holy shit. Victor, that’s horrible. I am so sorry you’re dealing with all of that.”

Victor laughed, a short, humorless sound. “A gay son is the last thing my family needs.”

He remembered the way Armando had said that, so off-handedly, like he could never even imagine that it might apply to Victor.

“Look, I don’t really know your family that well, so I can’t guess how they’d react to you coming out. But if there was one thing that was really obvious at your birthday party, it’s that they love you. A lot.”

“I know. I know they do. I just wonder sometimes if they… If they love me _enough_.”

Benji was quiet for a minute, but then he said, “My dad didn’t talk to me for two weeks after I came out. Like, not a single word. He hugged me in the hospital when I woke up, told me he was glad that I was okay, and then nothing for two weeks. I thought that he hated me, and it hurt so much, but then he just leaned over in the car one morning when he was dropping me off at school, and he hugged me. He told me he loved me. We’re not as close as we used to be and I don’t know if that will ever change, but I get it now, I get that he could never really hate me. It’s hard sometimes, but the fact that he loves me gives me hope that eventually it’ll get better.”

Victor wanted to be comforted by Benji’s story, but all he could think about were the times over the years that his family had made it clear that it wasn’t all right to be anything other than normal. His dad calling another man at church _flojito_ in a mocking tone of voice, his abuelo complaining about fairy wands and girl’s toys, the uncomfortable tension in the room when a character in a movie they were all watching turned out to be gay, his parents complaining at the dinner table about same-sex marriage being legalized.

He said, “You saw how they were at my birthday party. That’s what they’re like. If my little brother can’t even play with a ‘fairy wand’, then I’m pretty sure I can’t – can’t be what I am.”

A fairy. Queer. _Maricón. Flojito_. Tom Davis’ ugly, twisted face right before he hit Benji flashed through Victor’s mind, as it had off and on, ever since Homecoming. A fag.

It fucking hurt. Thinking those words in his mind, it made his stomach churn with nausea, made him feel disgusting, made him want to hate himself. If just thinking it hurt this much, how had Benji been able to withstand hearing it hurled at him in front of all those people?

Benji held him a little closer against his side and Victor felt so grateful for it. He was glad that he didn’t have to be alone that night. “You are what you are, though. Right? Whether they want you to be or not. All you can do is hope for the best from everyone else, because they’re the ones with the choice to make, not you. Being gay is not a choice, but being intolerant, being homophobic – that is.”

“And what if-” Victor stopped, swallowing thickly. “What if that’s the choice they make? What if they won’t accept me?”

Benji pressed a soft kiss to Victor’s temple. “Then I will. I’ll be here for you, whatever happens. I promise.”

Victor let himself slide a few inches lower down the wall, so that he could rest his head against Benji’s shoulder. They sat there together for a long while in the quiet, just the sound of the wind rattling the branches of the trees outside and the hushed rhythm of the horses’ breathing filling the room. Benji felt so warm and solid beside him. Pretty soon the exhaustion he’d been carrying around with him since the previous day caught up with him and his eyes were sliding closed.

Sometime later, he woke up to the feeling of someone shaking his arm gently.

“Victor,” Benji said, and Victor sat up, startled.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep…”

Benji smiled. “It’s okay. Look, I – I don’t know if it’s good idea to leave you alone right now. Do you… Do you want me to stay?”

The thought of Benji leaving him here to deal with his thoughts and his broken family caused a spike of fear to shoot through him. “Can you? Stay?”

“Yeah. I just need to tell my parents I’m at a friend’s house, but it should be fine. Uh, but it’s getting pretty cold out here…”

Victor became aware then that Benji was just wearing a flannel shirt, and he was shivering a little. “I, um. I don’t think we can go in the house. But I can grab some blankets, and we can stay out here.”

Benji sent a text while Victor gathered up the big heavy blankets they used for the horses. He led Benji up a short ladder into the loft above Beau and Elsa’s stalls, a small, dark space with a low ceiling, crowded with bales of hay. He spread some of it out across the floor and then laid the blankets on top. Only when he was done did he realize how much it looked like a bed, and he felt his face heat up.

He looked nervously at Benji. “Uh, we can both rest here, or uh… I could go down below…”

Benji rolled his eyes at him. “Victor, relax. There’s plenty of space for us to sleep up here together. _Just_ sleep.”

He’d brought an extra lantern up with them, and he set it down on a box nearby, and then slowly sat down on top of the blankets. His heart was pounding hard at the thought of lying down next to Benji for the rest of the night, remembering how it had felt earlier to kiss him and hold him so tightly. He had no idea how he was going to be able to go to sleep like that.

But Benji laid down next to him and pulled one of the blankets over himself, whispering “good night” before he turned onto his side, back to Victor. So Victor made himself turn the lantern off and lie down, too, under the thick wool blanket, already growing warm with the heat of their bodies. For a long while he stayed just like that, too nervous to even close his eyes, too wound up to let himself get comfortable. Then Benji huffed out a little laugh and rolled over to face Victor.

“Is this okay?” Benji whispered, and he slowly brought an arm around Victor’s waist. Victor nodded, let Benji pull him slightly toward himself. He turned on his side, felt the warmth of Benji’s chest against his back. “Just try to relax and go to sleep, all right? This day has already been long enough for you.”

It was hard to turn off his awareness of Benji’s body so close to his own, but eventually the rhythm of Benji’s breathing slowed, and Victor’s began to match it, that gentle in and out calming him, and finally he slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure if the next chapter will be posted tomorrow, or if it'll be a couple of days, we shall see... but it will be up soon!


	15. The Perfect Thing to Say

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: internalized homophobia, mention of infidelity

The sound of a cell phone alarm going off startled Victor out of sleep the next morning, and he froze as he realized there was a warm body pressed up behind him. He opened his eyes, taking in the bales of hay and boxes of old fencing materials nearby, the heavy wool blanket covering him that smelled of grass and horses, the rough gray wood of the ceiling. He was in the barn, up in the loft, and beginning to stir beside him was… Benji. He’d fallen asleep last night in Benji’s arms, and he felt his face go hot at the memory.

Victor sat up quickly, cool air nipping his skin as the blanket fell away. Benji grumbled and rolled away from him, one arm dragging the blanket higher up over his shoulder and the other reaching out to silence the alarm. Victor stared at him, having a hard time believing that last night had really happened.

But it had, and here was the proof: Benji, half-asleep, his hair a beautiful disaster, lying on a bed of hay, his back close enough to Victor’s hip that Victor could feel his warmth.

Everything that had happened flashed through Victor’s mind again, like the recap at the beginning of a TV show. The break up with Mia, kissing Benji, talking to Simon, sleeping in the truck, his father’s arrest, his mother’s affair, and… and kissing Benji again, last night, kissing him and talking with him and falling asleep together. It felt surreal. The last two days were such a strange mix of awful, painful moments of crisis, of feeling certain that his life was falling apart, and then moments with Benji that left him feeling giddy and drunk with how good they had been. He didn’t know what to feel about all of it now. Mostly he was just tired and anxious about what would come next.

The alarm on Benji’s phone went off again and he stuck a hand out from under the blanket to turn it off before rolling onto his back with a sigh. He laid there, squinting up at the ceiling for awhile, looking adorably grumpy about being awake. Victor had no idea what time it was, but he was guessing early, judging by the dim light streaming into the lower part of the barn.

“Good morning,” Victor said, quietly, a little unsure of where things stood with them. He’d never spent the night with someone like this before, never woken up beside someone after being wrapped up in their arms under the covers. He didn’t know what it meant for them.

But Benji just groaned a little and rubbed at his eyes, one hand gripping the edge of the blanket a little tighter. “Morning,” he said, voice rougher than normal, and there was something so endearing about seeing Benji like this that Victor forgot what he’d been worrying about.

“We should probably get up soon,” Victor said, although it was pretty much the last thing he wanted to do. It felt so safe here in the barn, just the two of them. Victor was dreading ever stepping foot outside of it again, but he knew they couldn’t stay for much longer. “Someone might come out here to feed the horses soon.”

Benji pushed himself upright, staring bleary-eyed at their surroundings. “Man, I can’t believe I just spent the night in a barn. Is this kind of thing normal for you country kids?”

“Yep. Next thing you know we’ll have you mutton bustin’ and barrel racing,” Victor teased.

“Oh wow. I don’t think I’m ready for whatever the hell that is.” Benji pressed a hand to his hair, attempting to flatten out the messy spikes, but without much success. There was a bit of hay stuck near the back. God, Victor wanted to kiss him again so bad.

To distract himself from those thoughts, Victor asked, “How’d you get here last night?”

“I walked from Brasstown. It took a very long time.”

“I’ll give you a ride home, then. C’mon.”

Victor stood up, and held a hand out to Benji. They cleared away the blankets and climbed down the ladder. It was so early that Victor doubted anyone would be headed out to feed the animals yet, but he still peeked cautiously out the barn door toward the house just in case. The kitchen windows were dark, so he guessed no one was up yet.

They walked through the chill morning air to Victor’s truck, taking a roundabout path to the driveway that Victor hoped would keep them out of sight. Just as they reached the car, Victor panicked, afraid his keys were in his room, but when he patted down his pockets he was relieved to find them there from the day before.

As they were driving to Benji’s house, Benji asked him, “How are you feeling now?”

“I don’t know. Just… tired. Messed up. I don’t know what to feel about everything.”

“Yeah. It’s a lot to process. Victor… I’m kind of worried about you. I mean, that’s so much to deal with, and you seem like you’re having a really tough time with all of it. So will you – will you promise me something?”

“What is it?”

“Don’t shut me out again? Please? When you just ran away from me the other night, and you didn’t answer your phone or reply to my texts for so long, I – I was really scared. I just kept imagining all these awful things that might have happened to you and it really sucked. So please just talk to me next time, if you’re in trouble. I want to help.”

Some part of Victor, full of guilt for the way he’d ignored Benji and disappeared on him, was insisting that he didn’t deserve this kindness, but mostly he was just so grateful that he hadn’t completely ruined everything with Benji, that Benji still cared about him and wanted to be there for him, that he didn’t have to be so alone with all of his pain. It felt like he’d been alone for so long, trapped within all of the secrets and the lies he’d been living with, and the extent to which he had been lonely hit him now. It was insane that he’d been living like that for such a long time. He never wanted to do it again.

“Okay. I promise.” Victor pulled up outside of Benji’s house, and turned off the engine. He caught Benji’s gaze. “I’m so sorry. For taking off like that and making you worry about me. I won’t do it again. Ever. And… thank you, for listening last night and for staying with me. I really needed that.”

“Anytime.” Benji’s mouth turned up in a playful smile. “It’s not like it was some great burden to spend the night with you.”

Victor ducked his head to hide his blush, and felt a little surprised by the grin that was spreading across his face, the happiness that was bubbling up inside of him despite the current disaster that was his life. “Oh. Good. ‘Cause… I really liked it, too.”

Benji’s eyes were bright, the morning sunlight catching on the tiny flecks of green in his irises. He leaned over and pressed a slow, lingering kiss to Victor’s mouth, just a hint of teeth tugging at Victor’s bottom lip, and he found himself following instinctively after Benji when he pulled away. Benji grinned back at him. “I’ll see you soon,” he said, and Victor couldn’t stop himself from stealing one more kiss before Benji slipped out of the truck.

A light rain began to dot the windows, glittering brightly against the glass. Victor just sat there, watching through the raindrops as Benji walked up his driveway and into his house. There was a lightness of being that lingered for awhile after Benji had gone, something Victor hadn’t felt in… years, probably. He thought it might be the feeling of just _being_ _himself_ , for once, without any pressure to be anything else. He’d almost forgotten what it had felt like.

As Victor was on his way home from Benji’s house, an idea occurred to him, and it was scary and kinda made him want to throw up but it felt like the right thing to do, so without questioning the impulse he drove past his own driveway and pulled into Felix’s. He sat there in the truck for a minute, typing out the message, _Come outside please._

About five minutes later Felix came out of his house in a hoodie and a pair of flannel PJ’s and climbed into the truck. “Hey, was everything okay yesterday? You never replied to my texts, _or_ answered the walkie-talkie. I was starting to wonder if you’d dropped dead on me or something.”

“I’m sorry. Things at home are… they’re really, really bad right now.” Victor took all the memories of what had happened with his family yesterday and shoved them as far away as he could; if he started to dwell on all of that, he’d never have the strength to go through with this. “I’ll tell you what’s going on later, but there’s something else I need to do first.”

He looked at his best friend, the boy he’d known since kindergarten, the one he’d grown up with, and one of the people he trusted most in the world. He knew Felix wouldn’t have a problem with this, but it was still so incredibly difficult to say.

“I… I have to tell you something.” He gripped the steering wheel tightly, tried to quell the shaking of his hands. “…Could you maybe turn around? Please? I don’t think I can say this with you looking at me. You never blink enough.”

“What?” Felix said, startled, but turned his back to Victor anyway. “Great, now I’m overcompensating on the blinking. Thanks a lot. If I develop some kind of nervous twitch I’m blaming you.”

“Felix… I, uh…” He swallowed again, his throat feeling like it was made of sandpaper. He forced the words out despite the fear making his heart pound and his hands tremble, “I like guys. Like, I’m into them. I’ve been confused about it for a really long time, and I thought I liked Mia, too, and I really wanted everything to work out with her because she’s awesome… but I can’t be with her. Because I’m… because I like guys.”

Victor waited with bated breath for Felix’s reaction, but the silence dragged out for a long time. Finally, Felix said, “Can I turn around now?”

“Yeah.”

When Felix turned back toward him, Victor could see his friend’s eyes were bright with tears and he would have been afraid if Felix wasn’t also looking at him with so much warmth. “I really don’t know the perfect thing to say. But… this doesn’t change anything, Victor. You’re still my best friend and I love you.”

He dragged Victor forward into a hug, a little awkward in the tight confines of the truck, but it didn’t matter. Victor had said it, he’d finally, after all this time, come out to Felix and it was okay. It was better than okay. Felix was warm and steady and the way he smelled was so familiar, carrying memories of long days spent in Felix’s room building Lego castles, or sleepovers in the Salazar living room with Pilar and baby Adrian. Victor had never really thought that he would lose Felix if he told him the truth, but it was a relief nevertheless to be accepted so completely and easily.

“Love you, too,” he whispered.

Felix was crying a little and rubbing at his eyes when they pulled away from each other.

“Oh god, don’t do that,” Victor said, worrying that something was wrong after all. “Don’t cry.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t help it. I just… I had no idea about this, Victor. I’m your best friend and I _didn’t know_. You must have been going through so much lately and I’m just… I’m sorry you had to do it on your own.”

Victor swallowed hard, his throat aching, and felt like he might start crying again, too. “It’s not your fault. I couldn’t talk about it before. I wasn’t ready.”

“Wait… did something happen on Friday night? Oh no, what about Mia? Did you tell her?”

Victor nodded, that familiar, bitter sensation of guilt making his stomach turn. “Yeah. Yeah, I did, and we broke up. I think we might try to be friends someday, if she’s ever willing to forgive me for this. I won’t exactly blame her if she doesn’t.”

“Hey, I don’t know all the details of what went down the other night, but this isn’t really your fault, Victor. I can’t even imagine how hard this must be for you. I get that Mia’s feelings probably got hurt, but she really likes you. I’d be very surprised if she never forgives you. Anyway, it’s not like you cheated on her or killed her cat or something.”

“No,” Victor said, “No, I didn’t cheat on her, but maybe… maybe I wanted to. I’ve had feelings for someone else the entire time Mia and I were together, and I just kept trying to ignore it, but… but I never should have tried to date Mia when there was someone else I cared about more.”

“Victor, is it…”

“Felix, if you ask me if that person is _you_ , I swear to god...”

Felix laughed. “No, no… I mean, your loss. I am _quite_ the catch, but I was going to say… it’s Benji, isn’t it?”

Victor gaped at him. “How did you _know_ that? Is it that obvious?”

“Well, no. I honestly never had a clue that you were into guys until you just told me about it. But now that I know, well, some things are starting to make more sense. Like the way your whole face lights up like a freaking Christmas tree every time Benji walks into a room, or the way you stare at him sometimes like you’re dying of thirst and he’s got an oasis in his back pocket.”

“Oh my god,” Victor groaned. His face felt so hot he was pretty sure he could fry a full breakfast on it.

“So?” Felix prompted.

“So what?”

“So are you going to ask him out? I mean, he’s single and gay, and you’re also single now and, uh, gay, right? I mean, you said you like guys, and I don’t want to put any labels on you that you don’t want, or make any assumptions or whatever, but, um, sorry, I don’t know what I’m even saying…”

Victor just smiled weakly, feeling a little shaky but mostly okay for now. “No, it’s fine, I mean. Yeah. I am. I’m… gay.”

“Okay,” Felix said, smiling back. “Okay, cool. Well? You gonna ask your dream guy out or what?”

“Um. Well, I actually kind of kissed Benji, right after I broke up with Mia. And then again last night, and um, this morning. There has been a lot of kissing already.”

“Whoah.” Felix’s brows were so high they had pretty much climbed right into his bangs.

They sat in the car for awhile and Victor told Felix the whole story of the break up and finding Benji at the concert, and then Benji staying the night with him in the barn. He left out the part in the middle about his family because he just wasn’t ready to think about it yet. Felix sat there in his pajamas since it was only eight in the morning, his hair still messy from bed, and listened to Victor talk about kissing a boy, and spending the night with a boy, and Victor couldn’t even believe that any of this was really happening. After so long hiding and feeling confused about himself, it all felt like some kind of bizarre dream.

As he was talking, he half-expected the feelings of shame and self-hatred to return, but aside from the part where he explained his break up with Mia, they didn’t; or not as much as he expected them to, anyway. He realized that over the course of coming out to himself, to Simon, to Benji, and finally to Felix, something had started to change. Some deeply buried pain inside of him was easing, thanks to the kindness and acceptance those three people had shown him. He knew that those dark, poisonous feelings of shame weren’t really gone yet, but he had hope now that maybe with time he could really learn to be okay with this.

When he finally finished the story, they both sat there for a full minute in stunned silence. Even though it had all happened to Victor personally, he felt just as dazed as Felix looked.

And then Felix said, “I can’t believe that in a single night you went from dating one of the hottest _girls_ at school to dating one of the hottest _guys_ at school. I mean, what the hell, Victor? Do you have some secret lucky charm you haven’t told me about? And if so? Not. Fair.”

Victor laughed, and god it felt good to be able to do that. “I don’t think you can call it dating just yet. I don’t know what it is, actually. We didn’t really talk about it.”

“Yeah,” Felix said, smirking, “it sounds like you guys were a little _preoccupied_. But seriously, you, like, spent the night together. And Benji confessed his feelings for you! You totally have a boyfriend, Victor – or you will soon, anyway. Also, your life is basically a _telenovela_.”

Victor’s heart did something a little funny at hearing the word ‘boyfriend’. It kind of… fluttered, maybe. Skipped a beat.

“It’s not that I don’t want him to be my… uh, my boyfriend,” Victor said, his heart doing that weird thing again, “it’s just that… I only admitted to myself on Friday that I’m, you know. Into guys. I’ve been struggling with this for a long time, and Benji – he’s been out for over a year, and he already had a serious boyfriend, and I’m just… I’m just scared that he’s going to change his mind about me when he figures out what a mess I am.”

“Well, if he does, then he doesn’t deserve to be with you.”

“Felix.” Victor let out a frustrated sigh. He didn’t know how to put what he was freaking out about into words that his best friend would understand. “I don’t know how any of this works. I don’t know how to be – how to be with a guy. I really, really like him but… what if I’m not ready for that?”

“If you’re not ready, then you’re not ready. You don’t have to jump right into some big serious gay relationship right after you figured everything out. You could just talk to Benji and tell him what’s going on with you.” Felix bit his lip. “Look, I don’t really know what any of this is like for you. There’s this part of your life that I don’t really get, and I’m never going to completely understand it. But I am here for you. I promise that I’ve got your back.”

A warmth bloomed in Victor’s chest that quickly spread through him, easing a little more of the hurt inside. “Thanks, Felix. You’re pretty much the best friend anybody could ask for.”

“Aww,” Felix cooed, leaning over to tousle Victor’s hair obnoxiously. Victor pushed him away. “Love you, too, buddy.”

Felix’s stomach rumbled loudly then, ruining the moment, and they both laughed.

“Is there anything you have to do today?” Victor asked.

Felix tapped his chin and pretended to give it some thought. “Well, let’s see… My plans were to stalk Lake’s social media accounts, maybe play some Candy Crush, stare into the void… Probably watch that Octopus Teacher documentary on Netflix. So, basically, no. I’m all yours.”

“Great,” Victor said. “Then let’s go get some food.”

“Wait, you realize it’s Sunday, right? Aren’t you going to church with your family?”

“Not today, I’m not. I...” Victor remembered, for a second, everyone’s faces around the dining room table last night, his heart clenching painfully, and shoved the memory away hard. Not yet. He couldn’t think about it yet. “Felix, everything is really fucked up at home for me right now. I’m going to tell you about it, but… later? Let’s just go get something to eat first.”

Felix dropped a hand on Victor’s shoulder, giving him a sympathetic squeeze. “Sounds good. Whatever you need today, buddy.”

Victor sent his parents a quick text – _Going out with Felix. Be back later._ – and then they drove into town and ate a big, greasy breakfast at one of the best diners in Brandon, and talked about nothing, and it was exactly what Victor needed. The good food, the warm restaurant, the fact that he’d told Felix about himself and everything still felt so normal between them. He’d never felt more grateful for Felix’s presence in his life.

After they ate, they ended up driving around the country roads with no real destination in mind, just listening to music with the windows rolled down low. There was a bite to the air now, but it was good, it felt cleansing as it rushed over his skin. The overcast sky was starting to break up, long beams of golden light cutting through here and there, shining on an old tree, the roof of a barn, a patch of field.

As much as Victor wanted to avoid thinking about it, his mind kept looping back to his family and what was waiting for him when he eventually had to go home later. His father, full of a terrifying rage one moment, crying like he never had before the next. His sister, betrayed twice now and so ready to lash out, to hurt someone else before they could hurt her. His little brother, anxious and confused and holding on so tightly to whoever would comfort him. And his mother. His mother, who Victor couldn’t even look at anymore.

Would any of them ever be the same after this?

The turn off for a long road that ended at an old reservoir came up on his right, and Victor drove down it, all the way down to the end, where a large, smooth body of water lay glittering in the patchwork sunlight. There was a small, dusty parking area, empty of any other vehicles, and Victor backed the truck up and shut off the engine. He hopped out of the cab and went around to open the back, climbing onto the bed. Felix joined him and they both sat there, staring out at the wide, flat horizon, watching the wind spread ripples across the surface of the reservoir.

And then Victor told him everything that was going on at home, about how bad it was and how scared he felt for his family. Felix listened quietly, knowing Victor’s family better than anyone else, nodding in understanding, sometimes reaching out to pat Victor on the back or squeeze his shoulder. About halfway through letting all of his messy, jagged, raw emotions spill out into the space between them, Victor lost it, crying harder than he had in years, huge, heaving sobs that made his chest ache and his throat burn. Felix dragged him over into a tight hug and just held onto him like that until Victor felt like he could breathe again.

“Feel better?” Felix asked him awhile later.

“Yeah. I mean, it’s still such a nightmare, but… I do. Feel a little better now.” Victor pulled back, cleaning his face with the sleeve of his hoodie. He was a complete mess. He’d spent the night in the barn, he hadn’t showered today and no doubt smelled like sweat and horses and dirt, his hair was probably greasy, and god only knew what his face looked like after falling apart like that. But none of it mattered, because despite how much it still hurt, he did feel lighter now, like Felix had taken some of the weight away from Victor’s shoulders when he’d held him.

“Thank you. For being here for me today,” Victor said. There was no way he could put into words just how grateful he felt for Felix, and Benji, and Simon. He had no idea how he would’ve gotten through the weekend without them.

Felix bumped into him lightly. “Absolutely. Nowhere I’d rather be.”

When Victor finally got home late that afternoon, he found his mom sitting alone on the couch, just like she had been the night before. The TV was on but there was no sound coming from it, and there was something strangely young and vulnerable about the way she met Victor’s eyes when he came through the door. The rest of the house was silent.

“Where is everyone?” Victor asked.

“Your father’s out. Pilar and Adrian are in their bedrooms.” A little nervously she added, “I don’t think your brother slept well last night. He’s been napping for the last forty minutes.”

Victor leaned against the back of the couch, watching as some people on a home renovation show tore down a nasty looking wall, revealing the water damage underneath. “Why’s it muted?”

“I did something to screw up the speakers earlier, and now I can’t get it to work,” Isabel admitted. Victor knew that she normally would’ve gone to Pilar to fix it.

Neither of them said anything for a few minutes. Everything felt so tense, like that moment when you hold your breath because you knew something painful was about to happen, like getting pricked with a needle at the doctor’s office, or that second before you crash your bike.

Isabel finally spoke, in a small, cautious voice that Victor had never heard her use before. “We’ve always been really close, haven’t we? I love that about us, Victor. I love that you can talk to me, that you like spending time with me. And I’m so scared that I’m going to lose that forever because of what I did. I just – I really hope that you’ll be able to forgive me, someday. I hope that this won’t change what we have.”

Her words caught on a loop in his head. _“I love that you can talk to me.”_ When was the last time he’d really told her anything personal, anything that mattered? It had been at least a year, maybe more. They’d still been close though, in a way. She’d still come faithfully to all of his basketball games last year, and he’d helped her however he could around the house just like always, and they’d still sat up on the couch until late at night sometimes, watching HGTV or the silly rom coms they pretended to only put on so that Isabel could make fun of them. But there had been a new distance between them that had only been growing wider and wider this past year, and he wondered if she’d felt it, too. They’d both been holding back, hadn’t they? They’d both kept secrets from the family, led double lives. The fall out from Isabel’s lies felt catastrophic. How bad would it be if his own secret ever came to light?

Suddenly, just being in the room with her felt like too much. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t stand there and listen to her talk about it and pretend like he was fine.

“I love you, Mom, but I can’t do this. Not right now.” He pushed away from the couch, began to turn his back to her. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to talk about this.”

He couldn’t look at her anymore, but he could hear the tears in her voice when she said softly, “Okay. I love you, too, Victor.”

He walked away, down the silent, dark hallway with all of its closed doors. He went into his bedroom and shut his own door behind him, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish I could wave a magic wand and give every lonely queer kid on the planet their very own Felix. He really is the best <3


	16. What's It Gonna Be?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: internalized homophobia
> 
> Chapter title comes from the song of the same name by Shura. The music video for it is very cute and has some Venji-type vibes, so I recommend it if you've never seen it!

As he walked up to the entrance of his school on Monday, people stared and whispered when he passed them, and it made him immediately want to turn tail and run. It continued as he walked down the hall to his locker, got his books, went to his morning classes. By third period Victor was thrumming with fear and stress, wondering what they all knew, what they’d heard. Had Mia said something? Did everyone know about the break up? Did they know the reason for it? _Did they all know about him?_

The second the bell rang after his art class he was racing out the door and into the nearest bathroom. He locked himself into a stall and leaned back against the door, trying desperately to breathe, to hold himself together somehow. He couldn’t do this here. He couldn’t fall apart at school with all of these people around, watching him, judging him, gossiping about him.

He was such a mess that he ended up spending the entire next period hiding in the bathroom. There was no way he could force himself to sit through his history class when he couldn’t even breathe, when his head was spinning and his hands were shaking.

It was lunchtime after that, and he couldn’t take not knowing anymore. He wanted to give Mia her space like she’d asked him to, but he had to find out what, if anything, she had said. He rinsed his face off at a sink and tried to calm down as much as he could. It didn’t really work. Then Victor went to look for Mia.

She was at her locker, putting some stuff away, and she did not look happy to see him. “Victor, I meant it when I said I needed to be left alone for awhile-”

“I know,” Victor cut her off, “I know, and I’m sorry, but… everyone’s been staring at me today, and talking, and I don’t know what’s going on. Did you – did you tell someone? About me?”

Her eyes went wide. “What? God, Victor, no. I wouldn’t do that.”

A couple of girls walked past them just then, clearly watching them closely, and began to whisper after they’d passed. Victor gestured at their retreating backs. “What was that then? Why does everyone seem to know?”

Mia sighed, a slightly guilty expression on her face. “I told one of my friends that we broke up over the weekend, because I needed someone to talk to. I didn’t tell her about you, though, just that we realized we didn’t feel the same way about each other and we ended things. That was it. But I think she might have mentioned it to her boyfriend, and maybe he told someone else… You know how it is at this school, the gossip chain is ridiculous. I’m sorry, Victor.”

Victor let a long breath of relief. No one knew about him. They were just talking about the break up. It sucked, but it wasn’t as bad as Victor had been scared it might be.

“All right. It’s fine, I get it. It’s not your fault. I’m sorry to bother you like this, I won’t – I won’t try to talk to you again, if you don’t want me to.”

Mia rubbed at one of her eyes as a tear spilled over her lashes, and her jaw worked. It seemed like she was making a huge effort not to cry right there in the middle of the crowded hallway. Victor felt sick to his stomach. “Okay. Bye.”

Victor walked away from her, feeling overcome with guilt and regret. His secret was safe because Mia was a good person who would never betray him like that, who would never hurt him as badly as he’d hurt her. God, he hated himself so much.

The thought of facing all of his friends in the crowded cafeteria and being forced to answer their questions about Mia was making him feel like he might freak out all over again, so Victor ended up eating lunch out in his truck. While he was there, he sent off a message.

 _H_ _i_ _Simon_ _._ _Fi_ _rst of all, thank you. Thank you so much for being there for me the other night. I really don’t know what I would have done without you. Talking to you about everything, and hearing all about your life in New York… it helped me a lot._

 _This weekend has been so hard, and not just because of_ _everything that went down_ _on Friday. Something else happened, too. It turns out that my mom has been having an affair with my dad’s boss, and when_ _my dad_ _found out about it, he attacked_ _him_ _. Now his boss is pressing charges against him, my dad’s going to lose his job, and the whole thing is so fucked up and scary. I don’t know what’s going to happen to all of us._

 _And on top of all of that, there’s Benji. He came to my house on Saturday because he was worried about me and he wanted to talk._ _So w_ _e did talk, about what’s been going on with me and my family,_ _and_ _about Mia, and… We kissed again. A few times. Also, he kind of stayed the night with me out in my family’s barn – but before you ask, nothing happened besides kissing._

 _I feel like such a mess right now. I’m still not_ _very_ _comfortable with… being gay. It’s such a huge thing,_ _and so new,_ _and I’m terrified of what might happen to me in the future because of it. And then there’s all this stuff with my family, and I feel confused about what’s going on with me and Benji,_ _and_ _w_ _hat I want to happen with me and Benji. What if he wants me to be his boyfriend? What if I try and I screw it up because I have no clue what I’m doing and my life is such a disaster right now?_

_Victor_

The last classes of the day dragged by at a glacial pace, and all Victor wanted was to get as far away as possible from his school and his classmates and all their staring and whispering. He managed to avoid running into his friends by hiding out in the bathroom again between periods and sitting as far away from Matt as he could in their shared French class. When the final bell rang, he rushed straight through the door and all but ran out of the building to the safety of his truck. He drove over to the parking lot behind Brasstown, even though his shift didn’t start for another hour, and just sat there for a long time listening to music on his phone and trying hard not to think about anything. While he was there, a reply from Simon popped up.

_Whoah. God. I don’t even know what to say to all of that. It’s a lot. Are you okay?_

_I’m so glad that I could help the other night_ _. If you need to talk again, don’_ _t_ _hesitate to give me a call. My life is pretty busy these days, with school and my internship and volunteer work, etc, etc, but I will do my best to make time for you, I promise._

_First things first, please make sure you’re taking care of yourself. If you have some people in your life that you can trust, you could try talking to them about what’s going on. Maybe even give the counselor at your school a try, it might help. You have so much to deal with right now and it makes me feel really worried about you._

_Secondly, it’s probably a good idea to take things slow with Benji. I know you really like him, that’s pretty obvious from everything you’ve told me so far, but don’t feel pressured to start a new relationship right after you ended things with Mia. Just try talking with Benji about how you feel. Tell him what you’re worried about. He’s_ _gay_ _, too,_ _and had to go through his own coming out process,_ _so he_ _might_ _get some of what you’re going throug_ _h._

_Hang in there, Victor. I hope everything gets better for you soon._

_Love Simon_

Victor tipped his head back against the seat, staring up at the roof of his car, and thought about what Simon had said. _“I_ _t’s probably a good idea to take things slow with Benji_ _.”_ He figured that was good advice, but what did it actually mean? So far, Mia was the only person he’d ever tried to have a relationship with, and that had only lasted about a month or so, and it had ended in her not even wanting to be around him anymore. And trying to be with Benji would be so completely different from that anyway.

For one thing, Benji was a guy. Obviously. But how did two guys date each other? Who was supposed to initiate things? What kind of dates did gay guys go on – did they do the same stuff as straight people? Or would that be weird? What would Benji be expecting from him if they did start a relationship? Would he want Victor to come out and tell everyone about them? Just the thought of it had Victor feeling like he was about to break out in a cold sweat. He definitely wasn’t ready for the whole world to know about him. So far, a total of four people knew (five, if you included Victor himself): Simon, Mia, Benji, and Felix. And that already felt like so much. He didn’t think he could handle adding anyone else to that list just yet.

By the time Victor headed into the cafe to start his shift, he was so worked up from overthinking every little thing that he felt like his body might explode from sheer stress. He walked through the entrance and froze when he spotted Benji behind the counter in the middle of ringing up an order. He looked more or less like he always did, his light brown hair pushed back messily, with a few soft strands falling forward around his face, wearing his gray Brasstown shirt that hugged his broad shoulders just right, his apron over the top. There was a small smile playing over his lips as he spoke with the customer, crinkling the corners of his eyes.

Benji looked over, spotted Victor standing there, and that smile broadened, grew bright and warm and beautiful, and it felt like a gift. It felt like something that was just for him and Victor didn’t even know what to do with all of this _want_.

“Hey,” Benji said, a few minutes later, when Victor emerged from the locker room and joined him behind the counter. There was a space of several feet between them, Victor standing near the cash register while Benji poured steamed milk into a to go cup. Victor had never been so aware of where his own body was in relation to another body. Benji put a plastic lid on the cup and handed it to a waiting man, passing close to Victor as he did so, his arm nearly brushing Victor’s. Victor drew in a sharp breath and held it, waiting for Benji to take a step back, but he didn’t. He was distractingly close, and Victor had only started his shift like two minutes ago, and he was already about to lose his mind.

“How are you doing?” Benji asked.

Victor swallowed, tried to clear his head of the haze created by his combined anxiety and desire. “Okay. I guess. I don’t really know.”

Benji nodded sympathetically. “Yeah, I get that. Is everything okay at home?”

Victor thought back to earlier in the day, before he’d gone to school. Isabel had been the one on the sofa this morning, where she seemed to spend all of her time now. The door to the master bedroom was closed, and he hadn’t even caught a glimpse of his father before Victor had left for the day. Adrian had been uncharacteristically quiet at breakfast, pushing his cereal around and around in his bowl and hardly eating any of it, no matter how much Victor nagged him. And Pilar hadn’t come out to eat at all. She’d just shown up at the front door when it was time to leave and hadn’t said a word to either Victor or Felix on the car ride to school.

“No,” Victor answered. “No, everything is still such a mess.”

“I’m so sorry. I hope things get better soon. If there’s anything I can do, or if you just want to talk, I’m here for you.”

Despite how stressed he felt, Victor couldn’t help smiling a little in gratitude. “Thanks, Benji.”

A couple of girls that Victor recognized from school approached the counter and stood in front of the pastry case examining the products. One of the girls was Ashley Park, who had been in his class in eighth grade, and the other one, a tall blond, was taking history with him now. He thought her name was Melissa, but he didn’t really remember. He’d never really interacted much with either of them.

Since the girls were taking their time looking over the products, Benji moved away to where he had a textbook and some homework laid out on the counter next to the espresso machine. The four or five feet of distance this created between them was a relief, but it was still so hard to be here, so close to Benji, in a public place where anyone could see the way that Victor looked at him, reacted to him; especially now that Victor had all of these memories filling his mind, memories of kissing Benji and holding him and curling up under a blanket together and waking in Benji’s arms.

He was so aware of Benji’s presence, could see him easily out of the corner of his eye, and it left Victor feeling completely exposed, like his attraction to Benji had taken on a physical form and anyone who looked his way would see it there, in neon flashing colors, impossible to miss.

The girls had noticed Victor standing near the register waiting for them, and were talking in a low murmur while shooting quick glances in his direction. Even though he knew they were probably just gossiping about his break up with Mia, it still immediately set him on edge, knowing what he’d been thinking about Benji even as these girls from school were watching him. He banished all his Benji-related thoughts to the farthest recesses of his mind and then locked them firmly away there. Or at least he tried to, and it worked for about a minute, but then Benji dropped his pencil and bent down to pick it up and Victor’s gaze tracked the movement of his body before he could stop himself and-

And then a voice cut into his thoughts, making him jump.

“Uh, hello? We’re ready now?” the girl he thought was called Melissa said, impatience written all over her face.

“Oh, sorry. What I can I get for you?” he asked, praying desperately that his cheeks weren’t as flushed as they felt.

Ashley and Melissa placed their orders, a couple of drinks and sandwiches that would need to be toasted, and Victor rang them up while Benji got to work on their coffees. The toaster oven was right next to the espresso machine where Benji was working, and as Victor waited for the sandwiches to be done, he was overly aware of Benji moving around right behind him.

“There you go,” Benji said, handing the drinks over to the girls. He returned to his homework, and Victor went back to trying very hard to ignore the fact that Benji existed less than a foot away from him, all too aware of the girls continuing to send little looks his way. But just then Benji turned, leaning into Victor’s space with his notebook in hand.

“Hey,” Benji said, pointing something out that Victor was too stressed to even be able to look at, wishing that Benji would move back a little so he could think, so he could breathe. Benji’s shoulder was pressed right up against Victor’s back as he leaned in, saying, “Would you mind helping me out with this thing for Spanish? I seriously do not get these reflexive verbs, like at all, and believe me I have tried.”

Victor glanced over at the girls and Ashley was definitely staring at him. He swallowed hard, tried to shift a little bit away from Benji, but Benji moved toward him at the same time, and Victor lost his balance, tripping backward over his own feet, and his left hand flew out to try and grab hold of something to stop himself from crashing to the floor. Unfortunately that thing ended up being the scalding hot side of the oven, sending a searing pain through his hand that made him jerk away, and he landed hard on the ground anyway.

The two girls and Benji stood there for a second staring at him, too stunned to react, and Victor thought to himself, _This is it. This is finally the moment when I die of complete and total embarrassment._

But his sad, pathetic life continued on, and Benji was suddenly rushing forward to kneel beside him, one hand on Victor’s shoulder and the other reaching for his injured hand. “Are you okay?” Benji asked. “What just happened there?”

Ashley and Melissa were staring, and although some far away rational part of Victor’s mind registered the fact that they just looked concerned for him, the rest of Victor was losing its shit over being touched by Benji while they had an audience. Victor jerked away abruptly, standing up so quickly that he accidentally banged his burnt hand against the cupboard, and then swayed a little as a fresh wave of pain washed over him. Benji’s brow was furrowed in a combination of alarm and confusion, and he got up as well, looking like he was going to reach out to Victor again. So Victor stammered out, “It’s nothing, I’m fine,” and spun on his heel, walking as fast as he could without actually running to the employee bathroom in the back.

Once inside, he locked the door behind himself and leaned back against the wall. His heart was pounding, chest rising and falling too fast, hands shaking just a little bit. What had he looked like with Benji there, kneeling over him, touching him?

Victor knew he was acting crazy, and tried to take deep, calming breaths, tried to slow the racing of his pulse. It was fine. He was being an idiot. Those girls probably just thought he was a total klutz and that was all, there was very little chance they could have noticed anything else about Victor just from Benji standing next to him for a few seconds or putting a hand on his shoulder.

He took a look at his hand and grimaced as he saw the dark red blister that had spread across his palm, curving down toward his wrist. He went to the sink and held it under the cold water for awhile, and that act of caring for himself, of soothing the pain, helped to calm him down. He couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been acting.

“Victor?” Benji’s voice called out, a few minutes later. “Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, sorry, just a second.” Victor turned off the water and left the bathroom. Benji was standing there on the other side of the door in the locker room, looking worried.

“Can I take a look?” Benji asked, gesturing toward Victor’s hand. Victor held it out for him to see and Benji sucked in a sharp breath. “Jeez, Victor, how did you manage to do that to yourself?”

Victor shrugged, embarrassed. “I don’t even know.”

Benji sat him down on a chair in the corner of the room, and pulled out a first aid kit. As he was cleaning and wrapping the burn, he said, “Are you all right? You’re acting really weird today.”

“I know. I’m sorry. It’s just that…” Victor trailed off, not knowing how to explain what was going on with him without sounding stupid or offending Benji. “It’s just that those girls from school were there, and you were standing so close to me, and it – it just made me nervous.”

“Oh.”

There was definitely a flash of hurt in Benji’s eyes and it made Victor want to kick himself. “I’m sorry, I’m such an idiot-”

“No,” Benji said slowly, “no, it’s okay. I forgot about that, about what it’s like to be around a guy that you like in public when you’re not really out yet, and – shit, I mean, I’m not saying that you like me, but – well, you do, right? I guess I kinda assumed that after the other night…” Benji cringed. “Okay, please say something and put me out of my misery here.”

It was rare to see cool, confident Benji this flustered, and it was so endearing that Victor felt a smile stretching across his lips, carrying away some of his stress. Benji was holding Victor’s wrist in one hand, cradling Victor’s injured palm in the other, as he wound gauze around it so carefully. The door to the locker room was closed, so it was just the two of them again, and finally Victor felt himself relax. He leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss to Benji’s mouth.

“Yeah, I do. I like you,” Victor admitted, face still close to Benji’s, close enough that he could easily kiss him again. “I like you a lot.”

“Oh. Okay. Great,” Benji said, grinning, moving a little nearer. “That’s good to know.”

A bell rang out that Victor recognized as the one on the counter by the register, cutting through the moment and reminding them that they were still at work. It chimed a second time shortly after, impatiently. Benji sighed. “I’d better go give the people what they want. You can stay here a bit longer if you need to. Don’t feel like you have to go back out there if you’re not feeling well. Oh, and there’s some Tylenol in the first aid kit if you need it.”

The rest of the shift passed by uneventfully, thank god, and Benji was careful to maintain a professional distance between them for the rest of the evening. In a way, Victor hated it, missing how they would normally work so smoothly and comfortably around each other in the small space behind the counter, but he also knew that he was too much of a disaster at the moment for that to be possible, and Benji giving him some space was for the best. Victor kept his mind focused on his work and maybe spent a little more time than usual out cleaning tables, straightening the merchandise for sale, and organizing stuff in the storage room.

It was a relief when they could finally lock the door and flip the sign over, the cafe blissfully empty of anyone but the two of them. By unspoken agreement they always took turns putting on a playlist when they closed together, and tonight was Victor’s turn, so he connected his phone to the speakers and started up a new list on his Spotify. It mostly consisted of Latin American pop music, since Benji was trying to improve his grade in his Spanish class and had made a request for more music to listen to in the language. If almost everything on the playlist happened to be sappy love songs that made Victor think about Benji, well, it’s not like Benji was fluent enough yet to figure that out.

They didn’t talk much as they went about their tasks, but the silence between them was comfortable. Victor found himself pausing sometimes, watching Benji’s arms as he wiped down a table, gaze catching on the way Benji bit his lip when he was concentrating on counting out the till, the way he pushed his hair back with both hands after tidying away some of the extra supplies under the counter. Victor found himself holding his breath, waiting for the familiar feelings of shame or fear to come, but they never did. There was no one else here to see them, to see the way that Victor felt about Benji no doubt written all over his face, and… and feeling this way, letting his guard down enough to relax and just _look_ at him… it was _good_. It wasn’t scary or disgusting or wrong or any of the things he’d told himself for so long, it just felt _good_.

He had a feeling it would take time before he could feel that way anywhere other than in private, but this was _something_ , this was Victor getting a little better at being okay with who he was, and he was going to hold onto it, keep it somewhere secret and safe, for the times when he wasn’t okay.

Pretty much everything was finished so Victor leaned back against the doorway to the locker room, watching as Benji completed his final task, and then Benji glanced up and caught Victor staring. Their eyes held, and there was no reason anymore to look away, there was no one there to hide from. There was only him, and Benji, and a heat that was pooling inside of him, spreading all over, filling up every part of him with warmth.

Victor thought about all of the questions that had been plaguing him earlier in the day, all of the nervous tension and stress and discomfort, and it all just seemed so unimportant right now. He knew he’d probably go back to freaking out and overthinking everything later, that the answers to those questions were something he’d have to talk to Benji about at some point, but something about this moment was making it difficult to care.

Benji finished what he was doing, and walked slowly up to Victor, like he was nervous about scaring him away, but Victor didn’t feel scared of this just then. If anything, he was feeling the complete opposite, like all he wanted was to lean into it.

“You doing okay?” Benji asked softly, stopping in front of Victor. “How’s your hand?”

“Fine. It’s sore, but it’ll be all right.”

“That’s good.”

There had never been so much tension between the two of them before. There’d always been something there, that was obvious, but not like this, not this thick, heavy thing that was making Victor feel a little bit drunk, a little unsteady. All he could think about was how good it had felt to kiss Benji and touch him and be close to him. All he wanted was to do it again, but something was holding him back. Maybe it was that he didn’t know how to just go for it, not when he wasn’t going out of his mind with some crazy emotional crisis. Maybe it was that some of that uncertainty from earlier in the day was worming its way back in, making him wonder if it would be okay to reach out, if he was allowed to do that.

“Can I-” Victor started and then stopped, his throat dry. He swallowed, tried again. “Can I kiss you?”

Benji just nodded, and closed the remaining distance between them, bringing one hand up to the back of Victor’s neck and pulling him down until their lips met. Kissing Benji this time felt different from before. It wasn’t a quick, stolen kiss in the back room or a kiss goodbye, it wasn’t seeking an answer or trying to bury some overwhelming pain. It was just slow and soft and so, so good, that heady, drunken feeling taking over, making Victor feel like he was floating and yet somehow more grounded in his body than he’d ever been. Victor wound his arms around Benji’s waist, drew him in tighter, felt himself gasp when Benji’s teeth tugged on his lower lip.

It was hard to maintain his balance against the door frame and continue kissing Benji the way he wanted to, and so they ended up stumbling backward into the locker room, Benji pressing him back against the cool metal and holding him there. And Victor got it now, why everyone else his age was so obsessed with making out and sex and dating and all of it. He’d never understood before, never really lost himself like this in another person, never felt like he just couldn’t ever get enough of someone the way he couldn’t possibly get enough of Benji. Being with Benji like this made sense on some primal, biological level that made everything he’d ever heard about how wrong it was to feel this way go up in smoke. Every gay joke, every slur, every disgusted look or fire and brimstone sermon – none of it held any weight in the face of how unbelievably _right_ this felt.

When something started buzzing near Victor’s thigh, it took him a minute to even register it, unable to really process anything beyond how good it was to have Benji all pressed up against him and their mouths moving together. But Benji pulled back, flushed and breathless, and huffed out a laugh.

“Wow,” Victor said, laughing a little himself, and ducking his head to hide the huge grin that was taking over his entire face.

“Yeah,” Benji agreed, licking his lips. He made an attempt at straightening out his hair and clothes as he looked down at his phone. “Um. That’s my mom. She’s waiting outside to give me a ride home, so I should probably go.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Benji’s eyes looked so bright, despite the dim lighting of the back room. “This was… it was really, really nice. But maybe we should actually talk about this thing soon? I know you’re going through a lot right now, and I don’t want to put any pressure on you or anything, but we should probably figure out what we’re doing here.”

And just like that, Victor felt a cold stab of anxiety lance through his chest. His grin faltered a little, but he made himself keep smiling. “Okay. Yeah. Uh, let’s talk later then.”

Alone in his truck a short while later, Victor wrote a message to Simon.

 _Hey, so, I actually did t_ _ell_ _someone about what’s going on with me. I told my best friend Feli_ _x_ _about all of it: Mia, Benji, my family problems. About me. And he was awesome, he accepted me right away and talking with him made me feel so much better. I feel really lucky to have people like you, and Felix, and Benji that I can talk to about this stuff._

 _I saw Benji tonight at work and we… didn’t really_ _figure_ _out what’s going on with us. But he said he wants to talk about it soon, and I don’t know what to do. I’m_ _so_ _scared of having a real relationship with a guy for the first time. But I’m also really scared of losing him_ _if I don’t at least try_ _. I know you said I should take things slow, but what does that actually mean?_

 _The thing is, I only feel worried about all of this stuff when I’m on my own, getting stuck in my head about all of it,_ _or when there are other people around and I get_ _to_ _o self-conscious._ _When it’s just me and him, it’s like all the fear just disappears and everything feels so… right. I don’t want to lose that._

_Victor_

That night, Victor was in his room, trying to get some homework done but mostly just thinking about Benji, when his door swung open and Pilar slipped inside. She closed it behind herself and leaned back against it, arms crossed over her chest.

“You broke up with Mia?” she asked, with no preamble whatsoever, just cutting right to the chase like she always did.

Victor felt himself freeze, eyes wide, and he stared back at her blankly, like maybe if he didn’t make any sudden movements she might give up and go away. Yeah, right. Pilar was nothing if not tenacious.

“Everyone was talking about it at school today. How the Homecoming King and Queen had already split up, and no one knew for sure why. The rumor mill was really outdoing itself trying to come up with an explanation. So what was it? Did you cheat on her? Did you have a big fight? Did she dump you for one of the guys on the football team?”

“No,” Victor managed, still a little stunned by the onslaught of questions. “None of that. We just…” He thought back to what Mia had told him earlier in the day. “We just realized that we don’t feel the same way about each other.”

Pilar’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell does that mean? Because you just _stayed the night_ at her house on Friday, and now you guys aren’t together anymore? That’s really freaking weird, Victor. What, did you just decide to leave her after you got what you wanted from her?”

“ _What?_ God, Pilar, how can you even ask me that?”

His sister just shrugged, her eyes dark with pain and anger. “At this point, I don’t know what the people in this family are capable of. Maybe you would do something like that.”

Her words stung, even though it wasn’t true and he was pretty sure she knew that, too. This was just Pilar doing what she often did, lashing out at other people because she herself was hurting so much. He would never just use someone like that, not in the way she was suggesting, but hadn’t Mia said it herself? _“I can’t help feeling like you just used me to figure out your sexuality, and that’s not fair. That really fucking hurts.”_ Was there a kernel of truth to what Pilar had accused him of, no matter how much he wanted to deny it? Had his relationship with Mia really just been some experiment all along?

But no, he had really liked her. He liked her sense of humor and her love of cooking, he liked the incredible way she twisted metal into works of art, he liked being with her and being close to her. All of that had been real, even if he should’ve realized that it all added up to friendship, not attraction. If he’d been more honest with himself, less of a coward, he would’ve known that, and maybe he wouldn’t have hurt her the way he did.

“Look, Mia and I broke up for our own reasons, and I don’t need to explain them to you. It’s not really any of your business. I screwed up, and I hurt her, but not in any of the ways you said. I didn’t cheat on her, and I would never – I’d never just sleep with someone and then dump them. That’s not the kind of person I am, and it’s really shitty that you would even say something like that.”

Pilar finally seemed to deflate, her anger gone as quickly as it had come. “Okay. Sorry. You’re right, I’m being a total bitch right now.”

“It’s fine,” Victor said, just wanting to forget that this conversation had ever happened.

“No, it’s not. I just – I just feel so angry all the time these days. Because of Eric, and then what Mom did. I shouldn’t have said that to you. But Victor… you’ve seemed so off lately, too, ever since I found you freaking out at Homecoming. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but… Everything’s so fucked up right now. I’m just so scared that there’s going to be something else, some other thing that’s going to come crashing down on all of us and hurt us even more.” She scrubbed angrily at her eyes, rubbing away the tears that were threatening to fall. “I just don’t know if I can take anything else.”

Victor’s heart felt like it was breaking, watching his little sister’s tough, ever present walls finally come crumbling down. She’d never seemed so vulnerable, not in front of him, not since they were little kids, anyway. He got up from his chair and wrapped his arms around her, and to his surprise, she let him hug her close.

He wanted to make some kind of sweeping promise, to tell her that he’d never do anything to hurt their family, but he couldn’t get the lie past his lips. If hurting them was inevitable, as it seemed to be (because how could he hide himself from them forever?) then he might as well not add the betrayal of a broken promise to what would come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Victor Salazar, gay disaster extraordinaire... He's such an adorable mess of a human being at this point lol  
> Next chapter will probably be up in about 2-3 days


	17. No Es Un Buen Momento Para Ti

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: internalized homophobia, description of a panic attack
> 
> The chapter title comes from a line in the song "Eres Para Mi" by Julieta Venegas. I would translate it into English as "It's not a good time for you."

By some act of god Victor managed to get through another day at school without seeing any of his friends, mainly by employing the same tactics he had on Monday: hiding out in the bathroom between periods and then running to class at the last possible second, and eating lunch in his truck. It may have been the coward’s way out, but Victor just didn’t feel emotionally ready to deal with all of their questions about his break up with Mia and the “I-told-you-so’s” he would inevitably get from Jeremy. Especially not after the incredibly awkward hour of his life that was his Chemistry class that morning, in which his usual seat next to Mia had been filled by a murderous-looking Lake, leaving a free spot at Benji’s table. Benji, who he’d just made out with the night before up against the lockers at work, and the very thought of it made him feel hot and cold all at once. He took a seat, barely able to make any kind of eye contact with Benji whatsoever.

Benji seemed to sense how uncomfortable Victor was, and it probably wasn’t difficult for him to guess why, with Mia sitting just a few tables away from them. Aside from smiling at Victor and greeting him with a friendly, “Hey,” he didn’t try to talk much, and he maintained the space between them, never touching Victor in any way. Victor was both grateful for this and a little saddened by it, by the fact that Benji felt like he had to be so careful around him after the incident at the cafe. Victor hated that it was probably necessary, that Benji touching him here with all of these people around would definitely freak him out again.

Fortunately it was one of those days when Ms. Thomas spent most of the class time lecturing, so Victor just did his best to focus on her voice and try to ignore Benji as best as he could. And after nearly an hour of listening to her describe the finer details of unit conversion and significant figures, he was bored enough to finally relax (Victor might have been a secret science nerd but it didn’t mean unit conversion was something he got excited about). He slouched back in his chair, and Benji was leaning back, too, and without really thinking about it he let his shoulder rest against Benji’s.

Benji froze, shooting Victor an uncertain look, and that made Victor realize what he’d done, and then he froze up, too, and the whole thing became incredibly awkward.

Naturally it was at that exact moment when Mia turned around in her chair for the first time since the class started, in order to borrow something from the girl sitting behind her, and her gaze landed on them. She took in how close he and Benji were sitting and her eyes widened, and then he could practically see her putting the pieces together in her mind. After a second her face shuttered, and she spun back around.

_Shit._

When the bell rang a few minutes later, Victor wished Benji a very awkward goodbye, and then he booked it out the door to the nearest bathroom before there would be any chance of running into someone in the hall.

So he’d made it through the school day, and by some stroke of luck he didn’t have basketball practice, and it was with a huge sense of relief that he rushed toward his truck after his last class. And that was where he found her, leaning up against the driver’s side door, waiting for him. _Mia_.

There was an unreadable expression on her face, one he’d never seen before, but he could tell that it didn’t mean anything good.

“Hi,” she said, in a small, flat voice. “I need to talk to you.”

Victor swallowed down his fear. “Oh. Okay, sure. Whatever you need.” She walked around to the passenger side and he unlocked the car. They both climbed in and then sat there for a moment in a heavy silence. There were a lot of other people milling around the parking lot, getting into their own cars or standing around in small groups talking. Some guys nearby were staring at the two of them.

“Do you want to go somewhere?” he asked.

“Let’s go to my place. If you have time.”

“Okay.” He started the truck and headed in the direction of her house. “So… uh, how are you?”

Victor winced. That was such a stupid thing to ask. It was obvious from everything about Mia’s body language that she wasn’t okay and that she probably didn’t want to talk to Victor about it.

“Fine. I guess.”

Neither of them said anything else for the next five minutes, until he parked on the street in front of her house. It felt like one of the longest car rides of his life.

“Let’s just talk out here. My dad might be working from home today and I don’t want to deal with him.” Mia turned in her seat, facing him straight on, and held his gaze. “Victor, I have to ask you something, and I want the truth. Okay? I think you owe me that.”

He nodded, afraid to try and speak past the guilt that felt like it would choke him.

“Are you and Benji together now?”

She was watching him so carefully, like she was ready for him to lie about it. He wouldn’t do that to her. He was so tired of lying.

“Not exactly… but we’re also not not-together. I don’t really know what we are right now.”

Mia nodded stiffly. “And when did this thing with you guys start?”

_Oh._ He finally realized what all of this was about, what Mia really wanted to know. “Mia… I never cheated on you, if that’s what you’re asking. Nothing happened between me and Benji until after you and I broke up.”

She swallowed thickly, arms coming up to cross over her chest, like she needed something to hold onto. “Yeah. But we only broke up on Friday night, Victor. It’s only been like four days.” She let out a small, bitter laugh. “You wanna know how the last four days have been for me? I liked you so much. I never really opened myself up to anyone before, the way I did with you. Guys ask me out a lot, but I’ve always said no. It just seemed like all they cared about was hooking up, and you were so different – it felt like you really wanted to know me. Like you really cared. And I was even ready to – to sleep with you. So yeah. The last four days have been pretty shitty for me. Seeing you with Benji earlier, and now you telling me that something has already happened with you guys… that fucking hurts. It hurts so much.”

There were tears running down her face now, and Victor wanted nothing more than to reach over and wipe them away, to fold her into a hug, to beg for forgiveness. But all he could do was sit there and hate himself for causing her so much pain. He’d lost the right to be the one to comfort her.

“I’m sorry,” he finally managed to say. “Mia, I’m so sorry.”

“You had feelings for him for a long time, didn’t you?” Mia asked. The question left him feeling sick with guilt. “I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon. It makes so much sense to me now. The way you looked at him sometimes, the way things would suddenly feel uncomfortable when he was around. The way you always wanted to go to class early on the days when he ate lunch with us, like you were trying to avoid him. It’s stupid, but I was starting to think you were just homophobic or something. I feel like such an idiot.”

“I-” Victor started, not even knowing what he wanted to say. Another apology? Some excuse in his defense? Some explanation? There was no right thing to say, no words that were going to take back the ways in which he’d lied to her and led her on. All he had left to give her was the truth. “I have liked him for a long time. I – I felt something for him since the first day I met him. But I liked you, too, Mia. I do care about you. That was real. I’m just so sorry that I tried to convince myself for such a long time that I cared about you as more than a friend. I know I lied to you about who I really was, what I really wanted. I lied to myself about it, too.”

Mia drew in a deep breath, and brushed away her tears with the back of her hand. “I’ve been thinking, the last few days, about how hard it probably is to figure out your sexuality, how I don’t really get what it’s like, and I probably just take knowing who I am for granted. I was starting to feel like maybe I don’t have any right to be angry with you. But this changes things. It makes me wonder what was going through your head the whole time we were together, if you were just thinking of him all the time when you were with me.”

That stung, because there was some truth to it. Hadn’t he struggled to stay focused on Mia, whenever Benji was nearby? Hadn’t he known all along what he’d wanted, and put so much effort into denying it to himself? But Mia was right, he owed her the truth.

“I was scared,” Victor admitted. “I’ve always been the person that other people want me to be. At home, with my friends, at school, at church. I just do what’s expected, what makes everyone else happy. I think… I didn’t know how to want something for myself. How to just put all of those expectations aside and be me. You are one of the best people I know. You’re smart and funny and beautiful, and I love spending time with you. But because I was scared of the feelings I had for Benji, I took all of those feelings of – of admiration for you, and tried to convince myself they were more than friendship. It felt like all that time, there were two versions of me – the one on the outside that I showed to you and the one on the inside that I tried to hide from everyone, even myself – and I just hated both of them so much.”

The angry, betrayed look on Mia’s face seemed to shift then, not disappearing entirely but taking on something new, and it took Victor a moment to realize that she was now looking at him with sadness as well, like she pitied him. The fact that she could feel even a little sorry for him after he’d hurt her so badly was startling, made him feel unworthy.

“For what it’s worth, I am really, really sorry for all of it,” Victor said.

“I know.” Mia nodded again, shakily wiping away fresh tears, and she opened the door to the truck and stepped out. Before she closed it, she said, “It’s funny how when you’re hurting yourself, you tend to hurt the people around you, too. I hope you can learn to love yourself instead.”

Since Victor had a rare afternoon free of both basketball practice and work at the cafe, he holed himself up in his bedroom as soon as he got home and tried to catch up on his homework. It was hard to concentrate with everything he had on his mind – Mia, Benji, his family’s problems, his new self-knowledge and what it meant for him – but it also felt good to try and forget about all of it for a little while. He was finally starting to lose himself in the work when of course some fresh crisis had to erupt and drag him back into everything he’d been wanting to forget.

“ _Qué es esto_ _?_ Can’t either of you just be honest with us, for once?” Pilar was screaming. She was so loud he could hear her clearly even with his door closed, and with a growing sense of trepidation, he followed the noise out to the living room. Pilar was standing next to Armando’s laptop, which was on the coffee table, and gesturing toward it. From where he was standing, Victor couldn’t see what was on the screen.

Armando stared back at her, a heavy, resigned look on his face. “It is what it looks like.”

“Well, it looks like you’re thinking of just moving us all halfway across the damn country!” Pilar shouted. “These jobs are all over the place! Chicago, Phoenix, Atlanta… What, our lives aren’t miserable enough already, now you want to take us away from all of our friends, our family, the only place we’ve ever lived? What is _wrong_ with you?”

Victor’s heart was in his throat. “What is she talking about?”

“I’m going to lose my job. I don’t know why it hasn’t happened yet, but it will.” Armando was speaking in that dead, monotone voice again, the one that Victor hated so much. It seemed like that was the only way Armando could contain all of the anger and despair that lay just beneath the surface of his calm demeanor. “I have to support this family, and I can’t do that without a job. Once word gets out about why I was fired, no one around here is ever going to hire me. So what else can I do, Pilar? I’m sorry it has to be like this, I don’t want to move either. I’ve lived here my whole life. But this is the situation we’re stuck in.”

Isabel and Adrian came in just then through the back door, kicking off their muddy boots. Adrian’s cheeks were rosy from the cold wind outside, and Victor guessed that they’d probably been out taking care of the animals.

“Do you know about this?” Pilar demanded, staring Isabel down. “Do you know that he’s planning to move us off to god knows where because of what you two did?”

“This isn’t your father’s fault,” Isabel protested, “All of this, it’s on me, and I’m so-”

“Yes, it is his fault! He’s the one who went and freaking assaulted his own boss and that’s why he’s going to get fired! Can we just acknowledge the fact that you both fucked up?”

“Pilar,” Armando cut in, voice low, “Watch your mouth. You’re right, your mother and I are both to blame for what’s happening right now, but that does not give you the right to talk to us like that. We’re still the parents here, and you need to show a little more respect.”

Pilar sneered. “That’s pretty hard to do, when you two keep doing shit that makes me lose all respect for you.”

Isabel paled, her brows drawing together into a grimace of pain, and Armando’s jaw clenched with barely contained frustration.

“Go to your room,” Armando finally said, into the tense quiet. Pilar opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off, voice just a hair’s breadth away from shouting, _“Just go to your room, Pilar.”_

She stormed away and shook the walls with the force of her door slamming shut. Adrian, who’d been standing behind Isabel all this time watching everyone silently, rushed to press his face into Isabel’s coat, wrapping his arms around her legs, and began to cry.

“Please don’t do this,” Victor found himself saying, looking desperately between his parents. “This is so hard already. Please don’t move us somewhere where we don’t even know anyone.”

He thought about what it would mean to lose everything he had here: his childhood home, his friends, the basketball team, all of his extended family who drove him crazy sometimes but who he loved anyway. Mia. Felix. _Benji_. Leaving Brandon would break his heart in a way he didn’t know if he could survive.

He was surprised to feel tears start to spill down his own cheeks, and he could tell from the looks on his parents’ faces that they were shocked by it as well. When did Victor, the strong one, the one that held them all together, ever let them see him in a moment of weakness? But he couldn’t stop it, and he couldn’t stop himself from begging once again, “Please. Please don’t.”

“Victor, I’m so sorry-” his mother started to say, but he didn’t want to hear it. He was tired of hearing how sorry she was.

He rushed away to the safety of his own room, closing the door behind him. He threw himself down on the bed, ground the palms of his hands hard against his eyes, and just tried to keep breathing.

Sometime later, a notification pinged on his phone, and he picked it up, staring at it numbly through the blur of tears. There was a new message from Simon.

_Hey Victor, I am so glad to hear that you were able to come out to your friend Felix and that it went so well. Friends like that, who love you and support you for who you are, are the absolute best. I don’t know what I would’ve done without some of my best friends and all of the support that they gave me back in high school._

_All right, so about your boy troubles… when I said take it slow, I guess what I meant was give yourself a little time to think about everything that’s happened since Friday, which has been a lot. Figure out how you’re feeling about all of it,_ _a_ _nd when you’re a little calmer, talk to Benji. Be honest about where you’re at and what you want. You only just admitted to yourself that you’re gay a few days ago, Victor. It’s okay to feel like you don’t know what you’re doing yet._

_But if you do decide to start dating Benji, well, maybe try not to overthink things so much? Gay relationships aren’t_ _all the same, just like straight relationships aren’t all the same_ _. Don’t worry so much about how to date a guy and just think about how to date Benji. You already know him pretty well, right? So think about him, what he likes to do, what he’s interested in._ _M_ _aybe ask him how he feels about dating and relationships, and go from there._

_I gotta admit though, I am so genuinely happy for you that you’ve finally found someone that feels right for you. Just hold onto that feeling and you can’t go wrong._

_Hope that helps! Love, Simon_

Victor had barely finished reading the message when he couldn’t stand to look at it anymore and threw his phone across the room. It clattered noisily against his desk on its way to crashing onto the floor. He didn’t even care if it broke. What difference did it make? What did anything matter anymore, when his life was just getting steadily worse, like every time he thought he’d hit rock bottom the universe just opened up a whole new level of suffering for him to sink to.

Pilar had said _“Chicago, Phoenix, Atlanta..._ ” Who knew where they were going to end up? He’d never really appreciated his hometown all that much. It was so old-fashioned and conservative, and sometimes country life just felt so dull, and the last couple of years it had begun to feel truly suffocating living here, but it was still his home. It was all he’d ever known, and everyone he cared about was here, and he needed them. How would he get through all of this without Felix to talk to? Felix to share his secrets with, Felix to rely on, Felix to accept him unconditionally in a way he wasn’t certain his family ever would. And Mia, who he hadn’t been close to for very long, but who had come to mean a lot to him during that time. He wanted to find out if she would forgive him someday, if she would ever let him try and make up for what he’d done. He thought that if she was ever willing, she could become another one of his best friends.

And then there was Benji.

_“_ _I am so genuinely happy for you that you’ve finally found someone that feels right for you.”_

It had taken him so long to realize how he felt about Benji and to actually do something about it, and as scared as he was of being with Benji, he realized now that he wanted the chance to try. Maybe he would screw it all up. But maybe he _wouldn’t_ , and maybe it would turn out to be one of the best things that had ever happened to him. All of the time that he’d spent with Benji so far ran through his mind, and every moment of it was something he wanted to hold onto, to protect, to cherish. If it had been that good already, how much better could it become if he let go of his fears and went all in? If he chose to let himself have what he wanted for once? If he chose Benji?

But they were going to take all of that away from him.

Victor slammed his fist down hard against the mattress, but it wasn’t enough, the anger inside of him bad become an unstoppable force that was demanding to be let out, so he smashed his fist into the wall instead. The books and basketball trophies on the shelf nearby rattled, and the plaster shook and cracked, and pain lanced through his knuckles, and _he just didn’t care_ – so he did it again, and again, and then he was on his feet, kicking over his nightstand, sweeping everything off his desk, ripping posters from the walls. He didn’t care what he destroyed, he didn’t care what ended up in pieces on the floor, as long as it released some of the unbearable pain and fury trapped inside of him.

He didn’t even realize that his door had opened, that someone had come into his room, until he was suddenly restrained by his father’s hands on his arms. Victor struggled to get away from him, twisting out of his grasp, and for just a moment Victor’s rage had him clenching his fist and drawing it back, ready to raise it up against this person who had hurt him so much, who was threatening to completely ruin his life by taking away everything that he loved. But in the split second before he let his fist come crashing down, Victor saw the way Armando went slack before him, his eyes full of tears, and it seemed like he was just going to stand there and allow himself to be struck – _he was_ _just_ _going to let Victor hit him_ – and the brittle anger inside of Victor snapped, cracked like the fragile thing it really was, and all that was left in its place was pain.

A sob tore out of him, so raw it made his throat constrict, and then Armando’s arms were wrapping around him, drawing him in tight.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Armando mumbled, over and over. _“Lo siento, mijo,_ _lo siento mucho_ _...”_

Over his father’s shoulder, when he dared to open his eyes again, he caught sight of his mother in the doorway. He’d never seen her look the way she did then. Like her heart had just been ripped out of her chest and torn into a million pieces. It was exactly how Victor felt in that moment, too, and it was the same emotion that he could hear in his father’s endless apologies. They all seemed to be united again, if only in their brokenness.

The next day at school Victor went to his classes and sat through lectures and utterly failed a quiz in his history class and had no paper to hand in for English (it was half-written on his computer at home) and ate lunch out in his truck again in order to avoid seeing anyone. Or at least, that was what he’d attempted to do, but about ten minutes into his solitary meal there was a knock on the passenger side window, and Victor looked up in surprise to find Benji outside.

Victor nodded at him in welcome and Benji climbed into the truck with him. “So, this is where you’ve been hiding out,” Benji said. “Actually, I can kinda see the appeal. No noise, your own music, no one to bug you… Well, except for me, I guess.”

“Hey, you think I’d let just anybody crash my secret hiding place?”

“I feel so honored.” Just then he seemed to notice the cuts and bruises scattered across the knuckles of Victor’s right hand and his eyes went wide. “What did you do to yourself this time?”

Victor cringed. “I, uh… kind of punched a wall. More than once.”

His hands were truly a mess, with the bruises on the right one and the big red sore on the left from burning it at work. Coach Harris would not be happy when he found out about it, but Victor couldn’t really bring himself to care very much about basketball at that moment.

This only made Benji’s eyes go even wider in alarm. “Okay, tell me what’s going on. You promised you were going to start doing that from now on, remember? I’m holding you to that.”

“I uh...” Victor trailed off, not even knowing how to explain everything that was wrong with his life. Benji was leaning back against the passenger side door, turned toward Victor, his gaze warm with concern. He had on a dark green shirt that was bringing out the color in his hazel eyes, with his leather jacket on top, and Victor wished they weren’t in the school parking lot where anyone could walk by and see them, so that he could just get lost in kissing Benji again. All he wanted was to forget about his family and moving and all of it, and never have to have this horrible conversation. But he’d made a promise to Benji to be honest with him and he wasn’t going to break his word.

“It’s bad this time. It’s really bad,” Victor said, stalling. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the window, the glass cold and uncomfortable against his skin. He couldn’t look at Benji now or he’d lose the strength to tell him.

“Whatever it is, Victor, I can handle it. I told you that I want to be here for you, and I meant that.”

“But that’s the thing, you can’t really be here for me this time because-” Victor’s voice broke, and he brought a hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose, to subtly drag his fingers across the tears that were gathering in the corners of his eyes. He was on the edge of breaking down again, like that night in the barn, he could feel it in the tightness in his chest, in the trembling of his body. Beside him Benji made an aborted movement, reaching for Victor’s hand and then withdrawing quickly before making contact.

_He’s scared again,_ Victor realized, _he’s so scared of frightening me away that he can’t even touch me._

_“_ -You can’t because we’re leaving. We’re leaving Brandon. My dad’s going to lose his job and we’re going to have to move so that he can get a new one. No one here will hire him after what he did to his boss.”

Speaking the awful truth into the space between them was like ripping open a wound that had barely even begun to heal in the first place. Victor felt cut open, raw enough to bleed. He was crying now, for real, hot tears running down his face and he hated it, he’d never cried as much in his life as he had that week. He covered his face with his hand and kept his eyes squeezed shut in a futile attempt at blocking out the world. On the other side of the seat Benji was silent and perfectly still. Victor couldn’t make himself open his eyes, didn’t want to know what Benji looked like just then.

“I’ve worked so hard, all my life, to be what they wanted me to be. This normal, happy, reliable boy, that helps out at home and wins basketball games and dates the prettiest girl at school. I never let myself think about what I really wanted – until I met you. And then even though I was scared and I was trying to fight it at first, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about it. About how much I wanted you. Except I wasted all this time running away from what I was feeling, and now – now when I think I might finally be brave enough to choose something myself, they’re going to move us all away to some other place and I’ll never get the chance to – to be with you.”

Victor kept one of his hands pressed against his face to hide his tears, and didn’t look at Benji, couldn’t look at him as the truth came pouring out. Benji was so quiet beside him, but then there was a whisper of fabric, the slight creak of Benji’s leather jacket, and Victor felt the smallest of touches against his right hand where it lay on the seat. He cracked an eye just enough to peer down and see Benji’s index finger resting lightly on top of his pinky, curled just a little around it, such a tiny point of contact that no one walking by would notice. Victor wanted nothing more than to fully grasp Benji’s hand, to intertwine their fingers, to hold on to him so tightly that no one would ever be able to pull them apart.

There were voices outside, so Victor wiped his face roughly with his free hand and looked around. A group of guys passed close by, shouting loudly. A couple of cars away a boy and a girl were kissing against the side of a beat up red hatchback, oblivious to who might see them. Inside the truck, Victor couldn’t even make himself hold Benji’s hand, no matter how badly he wanted to, and he found himself suddenly so full of self-disgust that he thought he might throw up.

“You know, ever since we uh – we spent the night together, I’ve been kind of freaked out about this thing between us. The only person I’ve ever dated was Mia, which didn’t go very well, and it’s been less than a week since I finally figured out who I am, and I’ve been really scared of what being with you might mean. I didn’t know if you’d want to tell people about us, if you’d expect me to just – just come out to everyone, and I don’t know anything about how to be… gay. How to date a guy. How to be open and okay with all of this, how to not feel so scared and ashamed all the time. But last weekend I came out to you, and I told Felix, too, and another friend, and you guys were all so kind to me that I was starting to feel like maybe someday I was going to be okay. Then yesterday, when I found out that we’re leaving, I realized that – that I really _want_ to be okay with this. I want to have the chance to be your boyfriend – if you want me to be – and to learn how to be open and proud of who I am, to learn how to like myself, to really let myself like you. Because I do, I like you so much, and being with you feels right in a way that nothing ever has before.

“I just – I can’t believe that they’re going to take me away from you now, and from my friends, and the only place I’ve ever known. I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. It feels like – it feels like they’re breaking my heart, and I just hate it, I hate _them_ -”

It was too much, it all hurt too much, and Victor couldn’t breathe. He bent double, head in his hands, not even crying anymore, just trying desperately to draw a breath into his aching lungs. Everything was dark. Everything melted away, the car, the gray sunlight, the voices outside, all of it. It was terrifying. He was really falling apart this time, in a way that felt so visceral, so physically painful that he thought he would die. He didn’t know when he’d ever felt so scared.

When he slowly floated back to himself through the haze, he could hear Benji’s voice. Feel Benji’s finger wrapped around his. It was like a tether, a line anchoring him to himself. Benji was counting breaths like he had that night in the barn, drawing him slowly back into reality, into his body, into the cab of the truck where he could feel things again. Like the soft stretchy fabric covering the seat under his palm, the cool air, the warmth of Benji’s skin.

For awhile they just sat there together, Benji counting and Victor breathing, until his heart rate slowed and the fuzzy, floating sensation faded and he was dropped back into the real world again. He checked the clock on the dashboard. There were only a few minutes left before the bell would ring; they were almost definitely going to be late getting to their classes. But Benji didn’t seem like he was in any hurry to go anywhere, just sitting there calmly and waiting for Victor to put himself back together again.

“I’m – I think I’m okay now,” Victor said. He tried hard to quash the reflexive humiliation that was threatening to make him turn away from Benji and hide the vulnerable parts of himself that felt so exposed after the panic attack. He kept himself focused on the feeling of Benji’s finger wrapped around his, such a small thing, but so big in the way it conveyed all of the care Benji wanted to show him.

Throughout the process of admitting the awful truth and breaking down and then coming back to himself, Victor hadn’t been able to look at Benji, but he did then, and was startled by the redness in his eyes, the way they shone with a lingering wetness, the solemn, downturned line of his mouth. Their gazes met and Victor could tell that Benji’s heart was breaking just as much as his own.

“Could we just – could we get out of here, please? I want to be able to touch you, and I know we can’t here, and I can’t stand sitting around and watching you like this and not even be able to hold you.” Benji dragged a hand through his hair in frustration. “If we don’t have that much time left together, then I don’t want to waste what we do have.”

Victor’s throat was aching so badly he didn’t know how he was able to speak. “Okay. Where do you want to go?”

“Let’s go to my house.”

Victor started the engine and they left. He’d been prepared to make something up about feeling sick or a family emergency or whatever if anyone tried to stop them at the school gate, but no one did, and then he headed toward the old neighborhood in town near the college, where Benji’s house was located. As soon as they were away from the school, Victor wrapped his hand around Benji’s, tangled their fingers together, and held on tightly.


	18. If There Was No You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: very brief mention of alcoholism
> 
> This chapter title comes from the song of the same name by Brandi Carlile.

He’d seen Benji’s house a couple of times now, and it was just as he remembered it, a modest one-story with a porch out front that was shaded by the sweeping boughs of an old magnolia tree. White petals from its flowers spotted the green lawn and shrubs underneath, where roses and hydrangeas were growing. It was easily one of the most beautiful front yards in the neighborhood. Victor parked the truck on the street out front and followed Benji into the house.

Inside it reminded him a little of his own home, a bit crowded and messy, but in a way that felt comfortable and welcoming. The biggest difference though were the shelves that were built into the walls and full to overflowing with books. Everywhere he looked, practically every surface was covered in them. Benji noticed the way Victor was staring at them and smiled.

“Did I mention that I pretty much live in a library? My mom teaches English Lit, so we’re big fans of reading in this family.”

“My mom likes to read, too, but her taste in books runs more toward those cheesy romance novels you can pick up at the supermarket.” Victor knew all about his mom’s secret trashy novel collection that she kept in a box in her closet because he may have dipped into it every now and then. Not that Benji ever needed to know anything about that. He looked around the room, taking in the over-stuffed sofa covered in pillows, an afghan thrown over the back, the comfy-looking armchair in the corner by the window, the stacks of books everywhere. “This is really nice.”

“If you think this is good, wait till you see the backyard.” Benji reached out, taking Victor’s hand in his. There was a question in his eyes when he looked at Victor, so Victor looked back at him steadily, giving Benji’s hand a little squeeze. He wasn’t going to let himself feel scared of this thing between them, not now, not here where no one could see them. Not when he might lose it so soon.

Benji led him through a kitchen and dining room to a set of sliding glass doors, which he pulled open, and they stepped out into one of the most beautiful gardens that Victor had ever seen. There was a tall evergreen near the back fence, ferns and bushes growing in the shade it cast with its broad boughs, and another flowering tree with tiny dark pink blossoms next to a little pond. Near the water were tall, pale yellow stalks of grass and reeds, and a few white lilies floated on the surface. Flowers and small trees and shrubs grew in a haphazard pattern across the yard, but in a graceful way, well-maintained and obviously well-loved, and although the garden wasn’t that big, it seemed to contain hidden spaces just waiting to be discovered.

“This is incredible,” Victor said. He turned his head and realized that while he’d been looking around the garden, Benji had been looking at him, and in spite of everything that was happening there was something so warm and pleased in Benji’s gaze when it met Victor’s.

“It is, isn’t it? This is why my parents picked this house. The previous owners were a retired couple who didn’t really have much else to do except take care of this garden. Now it’s pretty much my mom’s favorite place to be when she’s not working.” He pulled Victor toward a little greenhouse near the pond. “C’mon, I’ll show you what she’s been up to out here.”

Inside the greenhouse the air was warm and a little sticky, an earthy smell pervading everything, like the aftermath of a rainstorm. There were wooden tables on either side of the space, covered in a messy assortment of tools, bags of soil, ceramic pots, and tiny plants sprouting in rows of small brown containers.

“These little ones are apparently Texas Bluebells. One of the neighbors gave my mom the seeds as a housewarming gift. And over here she’s got some Columbine and, uh, I think this is called Plumbago or something?” He pointed toward some planters with bright red and bluish-purple flowers, and then gestured at a large, succulent type plant in a big ceramic pot. “And this is Agave, which grows really slowly, but I guess you can make syrup from it eventually, like for cooking.”

Victor probably could have let Benji walk him around the tiny greenhouse for hours, just listening to him talk about the plants and his mom’s plans for them, where they would be planted later and what uses they had and random bits of trivia about them. It was so quiet and peaceful. All the heartbreak that Victor was carrying around inside of him felt like an open wound that was being carefully bound and covered by the gentle way Benji held his hand, by the living things surrounding them, by Benji’s voice, soft and smooth and lovely.

“You’re so lucky to have all of this,” Victor said. “It’s really amazing out here.”

Benji nodded. He leaned against one of the work tables, Victor’s hand in his, Victor close beside him. “This house has definitely been one of the better things about moving to Brandon. It’s been difficult living here, in some ways. People at school gave me a hard time, especially when I first got here. And then there was the break up with my ex, and then the – the thing that happened at Homecoming. And… and for awhile there, seeing you and Mia getting closer, and realizing how I felt about you, but thinking that nothing would ever happen with us, even though I felt so connected to you sometimes… All of that was so difficult. I started to wish that we had never moved here. But I don’t regret it anymore. Even if you leave, and I – I have to say goodbye to you, even then… I don’t regret it. I’m so glad I get to have you, even for a little while.”

Victor felt like he might cry, but he couldn’t, there were no tears left inside of him, they’d all been wrung out earlier when he’d broken down in the car. All he was left with in their place was the aching, constricted feeling of his heart. He brought his free hand up to cup the side of Benji’s face and when he kissed him, he poured all of the feelings that he didn’t know how to put into words into the kiss. With his hands at the small of Victor’s back, Benji drew him in close. Just like every other time they’d been together like this, Victor was amazed by how easy and natural it felt, how right it was. He had a feeling that it wasn’t just the difference between being with a guy versus being with a girl; it was about being with _Benji_. If they left, and he never saw Benji again, would he ever find another person that felt this right?

They stood there like that, caught up in each other, making out until Victor had almost forgotten why his heart had been aching so badly, why he’d been so focused at first on memorizing every little detail of Benji’s mouth against his. By the time they pulled back a bit to catch their breath, foreheads pressed together, a heavy rain had begun to fall. It was tapping out a percussive rhythm against the glass roof of the greenhouse, getting stronger by the minute.

“Maybe we should head back inside,” Benji said. He took off his leather jacket and held it over their heads for cover as they ran back to the house. Once inside, they kicked off their wet shoes by the sliding door and Benji led the way into the kitchen.

“It didn’t seem like you ate much earlier, and I skipped lunch to go looking for you, so maybe we should eat something now,” Benji said. “There’s some left over Thai food in here if that’s okay?”

“Uh, sure. Anything’s fine.”

Benji heated it up and they sat at the dining room table to eat. Victor took a bite of the creamy looking soup and very nearly spat it out again all over his bowl, his mouth suddenly on fire. He reached for the glass of water Benji had given him and downed it, and then grabbed Benji’s glass as well, while Benji bit his lip in an effort not to laugh at him.

“Uh, I guess I should’ve warned you that it’s pretty spicy,” Benji said, not very apologetically. Victor narrowed his eyes at him.

“Oh, you _guess_? What is this stuff anyway?”

“ _Tom kha gai_. It’s a hot and sour coconut soup with chicken. If it’s too spicy for you, you could just stick with the pineapple fried rice and the salad. Although, actually, the papaya salad’s kinda hot, too.” Benji shook his head in amusement. “You know, I really would not have guessed that you would be such a wimp when it came to spicy food.”

Victor rolled his eyes. “Why, because I’m Latino? You do know that not all Latin American food is spicy, right?”

“Actually, I was thinking about those ginger candies at work that you’re so addicted to.”

“Oh. Well. That’s different, those candies don’t make me feel like my lips are about to melt off my face.”

Benji pushed the plate of fried rice toward him. “Best to stick with this then, if anything happened to your lips I’d never forgive myself.”

Victor took a big bite of rice to hide the fact that he had no idea what to do when Benji flirted with him like that. By the way Benji was grinning at him, he was pretty sure Benji understood just how flustered he’d gotten him, and for a moment it just felt like their usual banter, like everything was normal – and then he remembered. His family was leaving Brandon. He was going to lose all of this. The rice in his mouth suddenly tasted like chalk, but he forced it down, and didn’t eat much more after that.

A few minutes later, Victor’s phone buzzed with a new text message from Matt.

_Yo where r u? Coach is freaking out_

“Shit,” Victor swore, typing out a reply to Matt claiming that he’d gone home sick.

“Everything okay?”

He put his phone back in his pocket. “Yeah, I just forgot about basketball practice. But it’s fine. They can survive without me for one afternoon. I’d rather be here right now. I – I don’t want to waste any more time, either.”

Benji’s smile was small and tinged with sadness, not quite reaching his eyes the way it usually did. He got up to clean their dishes and tidied away the leftover food.

“So,” Benji said. “You ready for the rest of the tour?”

Victor nodded, and followed Benji as he led him down a hallway, past an office and guest room, and into what Victor instantly recognized as Benji’s bedroom. Everything about the space was a reflection of Benji’s personality, from the guitar case leaning against the side of the desk, to the half-finished drawings and art supplies spread out among sheets of music, to the eclectic mix of band posters on the walls. Like every other room in the house there were shelves crowded with books, which Victor was tempted to take a closer look at in order to find out more about Benji and what interested him. The bed was made up with a dark red comforter, a little rumpled but tidy enough, with a window beside it that looked out on the garden. Victor could make out the blurry shape of the flowering tree through the rain streaked glass.

Up until this point, nothing about being alone with Benji at his house had made him feel nervous or uncomfortable. But now he found that he couldn’t take his eyes away from the bed, couldn’t stop thinking about what might happen now that they were here in Benji’s room with no one else around. What did Benji expect to happen next? They’d both said that they didn’t want to waste what time they had left together…

Victor had truly meant that, but now he felt a little uncertain by _what_ exactly he’d meant by it. Did he want things to move this fast with them? As badly as he wanted Benji, and that was very, very badly, he could tell from the anxiety that was causing his heart to race that he wasn’t ready yet for sex. The truth was, he didn’t even know in full detail how exactly gay sex worked, beyond what he could guess from the jokes that people made. He’d never had the courage to try and look it up online or to watch any gay porn, and he didn’t want to screw everything up with Benji by being really bad at it.

“Victor?” Benji said, putting a hand on his arm. “Are you okay? You look a little freaked out.”

“I, um. Sorry. I just didn’t know what you wanted to do. You know. With us being here alone...”

Benji’s eyes widened. “Oh. Oh, no, Victor, I didn’t bring you in my room for that. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I was kind of thinking we could just hang out in here, maybe talk a bit, or uh… well, I’d be up for making out some more, but we don’t have to go any farther than that.”

“Um, yeah, that’s cool. I’d- I’d be up for that, too.”

They sat down on the edge of the bed, and Benji drew him in close with a hand on the back of Victor’s neck, and they did make out for awhile. Any discomfort from a few minutes earlier quickly faded away, replaced by that feeling of rightness, of belonging, that Victor was beginning to associate with being with Benji. Eventually they pulled away to cool off a bit, and ended up laying down on their backs beside each other on the bed, Benji’s head resting on Victor’s arm, and just listened to the combined rhythms of the steady rain and the music playing from Benji’s speakers.

“So, is it just you and your parents living here?”

Victor could feel Benji nod against his shoulder. “Yeah. I have an older brother, Isaac, who I think I might’ve mentioned to you before, but he’s off at college now. He’s studying architecture at Georgia Tech.”

“Wow, that’s really cool.”

“Yeah.” There was a tension in Benji’s voice that surprised Victor. “My dad’s _really_ thrilled about it.”

“Uh, is that a bad thing…?”

Benji sighed. “My dad’s a project manager, you know, like he manages the construction of houses and sometimes commercial buildings. So he was really excited when Isaac decided to do something related to the construction industry like him. As if the two of them needed something else to bond over, they’re already more like brothers than me and Isaac are.”

“You guys don’t get along?”

“It’s not like we hate each other, or that we fight a lot or anything. We just have almost nothing in common. Isaac loves all the same stuff as my dad – football, action movies, fishing, and now building stuff, too, and it’s just hard sometimes seeing how close the two of them are. It’s like Isaac is everything my dad ever wanted in a son, and I’m… really not.”

Rolling onto his side a little, Victor leaned over and ran his fingers lightly over Benji’s hair, tucking it back behind his ear. “I’m sorry. That really sucks.”

“It’s okay. It’s got nothing on your family drama.”

“Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.”

“Yeah. Isaac’s coming home, actually, next week. For Thanksgiving. It’ll be the first time I’ve seen him since we left Atlanta. I’ve been kinda stressed out about it, but last week my sponsor said-” Benji abruptly cut himself off, looking suddenly nervous.

Victor turned fully onto his side, so they were lying face to face. He was surprised by how anxious Benji appeared to be just then, how he wouldn’t meet Victor’s eyes. “Is everything okay?”

“Sorry,” Benji said, staring down at the sheets. “I just – I have a hard time talking to people about my drinking problem.”

Victor’s brow furrowed in confusion, and Benji glanced up and seemed to realize that Victor didn’t really get what he was talking about.

“My sponsor. It’s an AA thing, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous? You need to have a sponsor when you’re going through the program. It’s a person that helps to, like, guide you and support you in staying sober. I was in the program back in Atlanta, and then after the stoplight party, my parents made me start going to meetings here…” Benji’s body was stiffer now than it had been a few minutes ago, taut with a nervous tension. Victor placed a careful hand on top of Benji’s on the blanket and it was a relief when Benji turned his palm up, weaving their fingers together. His posture softened just a bit. “I hate talking about this stuff. It’s one thing talking with my sponsor, because she’s like me, she has the same problem that I do, but it’s hard to talk to other people about it, even people I trust.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Victor said. “Today has already been hard enough.”

Benji leaned up suddenly and pressed a quick kiss to Victor’s lips. “Thanks. I know I can tell you about it, Victor, because I trust you, but… yeah. Maybe not today. I didn’t really mean to bring up that whole topic. I just wanted to say that my sponsor’s been talking with me about Isaac coming home, and reminding me that this isn’t a competition. I know that my dad loves both of us, and I shouldn’t feel like I have to be someone I’m not to get him to care about me. It’s just that sometimes it’s easier to say that than to believe it.”

Victor thought about all of the pressure he lived with on a daily basis to be the person that his parents and practically everyone else expected him to be. “Yeah, I get that. I think I’m still trying to wrap my head around that, too… that maybe some people will actually like me for who I really am, if I let them.”

The smile that spread across Benji’s face at that was so bright and beautiful that Victor almost couldn’t look at it, it made something inside of him ache so much. He was glad when Benji leaned forward to kiss him, so that he could just close his eyes and let go of everything else. There was nothing he wouldn’t give to be able to stay in that moment forever, just him and Benji in their own little world where nothing bad could ever reach them.

The sun was starting to set and the rain had finally stopped, the overcast skies clearing up, so that long shafts of slanting light washed Benji’s room in an orange glow. They’d been lying in bed talking and listening to music and kissing for hours, and by some unspoken agreement avoiding all mention of the topic of Victor leaving Brandon. He was beginning to feel like maybe his wish had come true, that they would be able to stay the way they were forever, when there was the sound of a door opening and closing somewhere in the house.

Benji sat up quickly, straightening his clothes and hair. Victor couldn’t resist reaching out to help him smooth down some strands that were sticking up a little in the back, which mostly just turned into a caress, because Benji’s hair was so soft that he wanted to touch it all the time.

“That’s probably my mom,” Benji said, as the sounds of someone else moving around the house continued.

Sure enough, a moment later a woman’s voice called out, “Benji? Are you home?”

They got up and Victor followed Benji out to the living room, where a petite woman with light brown hair the same shade as Benji’s was tucking a coat away into a closet near the front door. She was dressed nicely in charcoal gray slacks and a navy blouse, a pair of stylish black glasses perched on her nose. She turned and looked curiously at Victor.

“Oh, who’s this then?” she asked, and Victor realized that she had a foreign accent.

Victor had just a moment to feel nervous about how Benji would describe their relationship before Benji simply answered, “This is Victor Salazar, a friend from school.”

“A friend, huh?” she echoed, looking between them with an amused twinkle in her eyes. Victor tried to restrain the urge to straighten his shirt collar. Benji hadn’t accidentally left any incriminating marks, had he?

“Yes, Mum. A friend,” Benji repeated dryly, but Victor couldn’t help noticing that his cheeks had gone a little pink.

“All right. It’s nice to meet you, Victor,” she said, extending a hand. Victor shook it.

“You, too, Ms. Campbell.”

She smiled. “Call me Amelia. I hate being called Ms. Campbell, it makes me feel old. So, what have you boys been up to?”

“Just hanging out,” Benji said, maybe a little too casually.

“Mmhmm. Well, you’re going to come sit and have some tea with me now. I’ve been grading papers for hours and a little human interaction would probably do me good.”

They all ended up around the dining room table with mugs of hot tea and a plate of cookies. It felt strange to be meeting Benji’s mom like this, when things were still undefined between them, and when Victor knew that he would most likely be leaving Brandon soon. He wondered if he’d ever get the chance to meet the rest of Benji’s family. Even though things seemed complicated with his father and brother, Victor hoped that he would meet them someday, too; he wanted to know everything about Benji, so that he’d have as many memories to take with him when he left as he could.

“Do you take anything in your tea?” Amelia asked him.

The only tea Victor typically drank was the herbal stuff his mom sometimes made for him, usually when he was sick, or the sweet tea that was served at most restaurants in Texas, but he wasn’t a big fan of it.

“Uh, it’s fine like this,” he said.

“Try some milk in it, you’ll probably like it,” Benji said. He took Victor’s mug and added a little milk from a tiny pitcher. When Victor took a sip, he was surprised by how nice it was.

“That’s really good, thanks.”

“The tea’s mostly just an excuse for sitting around and eating biscuits,” Amelia joked. Victor stared at her blankly.

“She means the cookies,” Benji said. “My mom’s British.”

That explained the accent and the tea then. “Oh, that’s cool. Um, how long have you been in the US?”

Amelia dunked one of the cookies – biscuits – into her tea before taking a bite, so Victor copied her. It was a nice combination. “I’ve been here for ages now, ever since Mike and I got married… it’ll be twenty three years next spring. Never thought I’d end up in Texas, though. I’ve had a bit of culture shock living here, but I think I’m starting to appreciate life in Brandon now. And it’s good to see Benji finally making some new _friends_ here.”

Benji groaned. “Mum, stop. Why are you always so embarrassing?”

“What?” Amelia said, and Victor was relieved to see that she seemed to be more amused than upset by the possibility that he and Benji were more than friends. “You think I was born yesterday?”

Benji shot Victor a worried glance, and Victor knew that Benji was expecting him to get freaked out again. Victor realized that he did feel a little uncomfortable, but the fact that Amelia seemed so accepting and welcoming was doing a lot to calm his nerves. It had hurt to see the way Benji had been so afraid to touch him earlier when they were in the car at school, and Victor didn’t want to make Benji feel that way again, so he gathered up his courage and reached out, taking Benji’s hand in his. They were partially hidden by the table, but Victor could tell that Amelia had noticed, even though her only reaction was to smile a little wider.

For the next half hour they sat around the table drinking tea and chatting, Amelia complaining about the unoriginal writing of her students and how she wished she had more TA’s to help out with her grading, and she asked Victor and Benji about school and work at Brasstown. Eventually it started to get dark outside, and as much as Victor dreaded leaving Benji’s warm, inviting house to return to his own miserable one, he knew that he couldn’t put it off any longer.

“I’d better get going,” Victor said. “It’s getting late.”

“You’re welcome to stay for dinner if you’d like,” Amelia offered.

Victor was very tempted to say yes, but dinners at home had been so strained lately and sometimes Adrian wouldn’t even eat if Victor wasn’t there to make light conversation and keep his little brother distracted from the heavy tension in the room. And since he didn’t have to work at Brasstown that evening, he really needed to take the time to catch up on his homework, especially after he’d been too upset the day before to get anything done.

“Thanks, but I think my family will be expecting me at home,” he said. “It was really nice to meet you. Thanks for the tea and the, uh, biscuits.”

Amelia smiled warmly and surprised Victor by pulling him into a light hug. “It was lovely to meet you, too, Victor.”

In the brief moment that she held him, Victor found himself wishing desperately for more time. More time to get to know Benji and his family, to explore this new relationship and see where it took them, to find a way to heal the broken, hurt parts of himself that always seemed to be a little less painful after he’d been close to Benji. This woman had probably guessed how he felt about her son and she was still so kind and welcoming. He wondered how his own mother would treat Benji if she ever got the chance to meet him as someone more than Victor’s friend. His heart sunk, heavy with doubt that she’d ever be as accepting as Amelia.

Benji walked with him to the front door, Amelia disappearing down the hallway. They stood there for a long moment, Benji’s hand in his, neither one wanting to say goodbye.

“How long-” Benji started to say, and had to stop to clear his throat. “How much longer do you think you guys will be here?”

Victor hated everything about the question, wished they didn’t have to talk about it, wished he could just forget that it was happening. But he couldn’t, he’d been thinking about it in the back of his mind ever since he’d found out, and it felt like his awareness of it had colored every moment since then. “I don’t know. I guess it could be months, or it could be weeks. My parents didn’t really say anything about it, and I didn’t want to ask.”

“But it’s really happening? You don’t think there’s any way they could decide to stay here?”

Benji’s eyes were too bright in the dimly lit room, shining with tears that he kept trying to blink away. Victor wished that he’d never had to see Benji look like this, like his heart was breaking, and there was nothing Victor could do to stop it.

“I guess it’s possible that my dad will find some other work here, but… I don’t know. I’m scared to get my hopes up,” Victor said.

“Yeah. I know.”

“I wish it weren’t happening. I wish that none of it had happened – the affair, my dad attacking his boss and then getting arrested… I feel like I don’t even know who my parents are now. They’ve just become these strangers and nothing they do makes sense anymore.”

Benji rubbed at his eyes, and seemed to be struggling to keep himself calm. Instead of speaking, he wrapped his arms around Victor and held him close, pressing a kiss to Victor’s cheek. Victor buried his face in Benji’s hair for a moment, breathing him in, and hugged him back just as tightly. He promised himself that however much time they had together, he would make the most of it.

“Goodnight,” Victor said, and he kissed Benji one more time before he left.

When Victor got home a little while later, he was surprised to find Pilar in the kitchen cooking spaghetti, one of the few dishes she was capable of making without anything going up in flames. Adrian was asleep on the couch, curled up against the pillows in the corner with Olaf under one arm, and a cartoon playing quietly on the TV.

“Hey. Where are Mom and Dad?” Victor asked as he came into the dining room and put his coat over the back of a chair. The driveway had been empty of both of his parents’ cars when he’d pulled in.

“Dad’s out at Tio Sebastian’s house, helping him with something. No idea where Mom is,” Pilar said tersely. She dumped the noodles into a colander. “Can you wake up Adrian? _La cena ya_ _est_ _á_ _list_ _a_.”

It took a few tries to get Adrian up. He was grouchy about being forced to leave the couch, and kept complaining that he wasn’t hungry, but eventually Victor got him seated at the table with a plate of spaghetti and meat sauce in front of him. It was weird, just the three of them eating at the table like that, without Armando and Isabel. There had been nights in the past when Armando had been working late and wasn’t around for dinner, but Isabel was pretty much always there, and Victor couldn’t even remember a time when neither of their parents had been home. It felt almost like they’d been abandoned somehow, and from the quiet that descended over them as they ate, Victor wondered if Pilar and Adrian felt that way, too.

Victor was washing up after the meal when the front door opened and Armando came in. He looked worn out, as he always did those days, and accepted a plate of noodles without anything other than a quiet, “ _Gracias_.” Armando sat down on the couch to eat, another thing he rarely did, and didn’t even bother changing the channel on the TV.

It was late by the time Isabel finally came home. Victor had helped Adrian with his bath and put him to bed, barely getting through a single book before his brother was nodding off to sleep. Pilar was sitting in the living room for once, staring at her phone, and Armando had put on a soccer game. Victor figured that the only reason Pilar wasn’t holed up in her bedroom like usual was so that she could interrogate Isabel when she returned home.

Unsurprisingly, as soon as their mother walked in the door, Pilar said, “Where have you been all night?”

Isabel looked taken aback, and if Pilar had spoken to her that way before the previous weekend, Isabel definitely would have reprimanded her for it, but now she just pursed her lips and said, “I went out. There was something I needed to do.”

Armando stiffened. “So you just left the kids here to fend for themselves tonight.”

“Victor and Pilar are old enough now to cook dinner for themselves every once in awhile,” Isabel shot back, but then immediately looked guilty. She said, a little more softly, “And what I had to do was important.”

“Well? What was it then? What was more important than being at home to take care of your family?” Armando demanded.

In all his life, Victor had never seen his mother look as uncertain and vulnerable as she had since the truth had come out last weekend. He could see her struggling to get past it now, the way she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, looked around at all of them like she was bracing herself for whatever they would hit her with next. Like she thought she deserved it.

And then she said, “I had to do something, to clean up the mess that I made. I know I can’t take back all of the hurt I’ve caused, but I can at least try to make things better. So I went to see Roger.”


	19. Eres Para Mí

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: brief references to infidelity and alcoholism, some mild homophobic language
> 
> The chapter title comes from Julieta Venegas' song by the same name. I would translate it as "You are for me".

“I had to do something, to clean up the mess that I made. I know I can’t take back all of the hurt I’ve caused, but I can at least try to make things better. So I went to see Roger.”

A deep silence followed Isabel’s pronouncement.

And then, loud as a gunshot in the quiet room, Armando slammed his fist down hard on the table next to the sofa, and leapt up to his feet. He whirled around to stare at Isabel, shouting, “ _What the hell are you talking about?_ You _promised_ me, Isa, you swore you were never going to see him again-”

_“_ _Mando, por favor, escuchame-”_ Isabel said, and Victor could see that she was trembling, hands shaking hard where they were wrapped around the jacket she’d barely had time to take off before Pilar had begun questioning her. “I had to talk to him, I couldn’t just let everything go on the way it was-”

Pilar was shaking her head. “What is _wrong_ with you? You didn’t do enough damage already, you had to go back and see him again and screw everything up even more?”

“Are you-” Victor stopped. He could barely force the question out, but some part of him had to know. “Are you in love with him?”

He thought that maybe, just maybe he could understand why she had betrayed them all if it had been for love. The idea of her caring so deeply for a man that wasn’t his father turned his stomach, but wasn’t it better than the alternative? That she’d done this horrible thing to them for someone that didn’t even matter to her?

“No, god, no,” Isabel said, and that fucking hurt, it hurt so much. It was so hard not to judge her for that, not to lose respect for this woman that he’d always respected more than any other.

“I love your father,” Isabel said firmly, turning to to look at Armando as steadily as she could. “ _Te quiero a ti, mi amor, s_ ó _lo a ti._ That’s why I went to see him. Because I love you, I love all of you, so much, and I won’t let what I did ruin this family. I talked to him, and I made him acknowledge the fact that he’s not just some innocent victim in all of this, that he needs to take some responsibility for what he did as well. So he’s dropping the charges. He’s going to talk with his lawyer and deal with it tomorrow. And he said that he would be willing to accept a resignation letter from you, Armando, so even though you can’t continue working for him, you should still be able to find another job here. As far as everyone else knows, he got mugged the other night. I’ve been – I’ve been talking with him, on the phone, since you were arrested, begging him not to tell anyone what really happened. That’s why no one else at the office knows. That’s why you weren’t fired yet.”

For the second time, a stunned silence fell over the rest of them. Isabel shifted a little on her feet under the weight of all of their gazes, but she held her ground, looking more sure of herself than she had in days.

“I told you I would handle this,” Armando finally said. None of the furious tension had left his body, which seemed to be nearly vibrating with the effort of containing it. “This is my work, Isa, my career that you’re just screwing around with. And you told me that you would let me handle it in my own way – not just, just _go behind my back again_ , with _Roger_ , to try and make some fucking deal with him! What did he want in exchange for all of that, huh?”

Isabel’s jaw clenched. “Nothing. He did it because it was the right thing to do. Because he knows that what we did was wrong. I didn’t just go and-” She cut herself off, sighing in frustration. Her eyes darted away from Armando’s briefly, to Victor and Pilar. “Can we not do this in front of them? Please? I just wanted to find some way to make this better. I can see how much moving away from here would hurt the kids, would hurt all of us, and I couldn’t sit back and let that happen. Not when there was a chance that I could do something about it.”

“This doesn’t change the fact that you caused this whole mess in the first place,” Pilar said stubbornly, but the way she’d been glaring at Isabel had softened a little.

So many different thoughts and feelings were racing through Victor’s mind that he felt like he couldn’t hold onto any of them. The main thing that stood out was that this was what he’d been afraid of: the possibility of getting his hopes up, only to have them crushed by the next disaster to hit their family. It would be easier to have never felt any hope at all than to have it given to him and just ripped away later on. But it was too late now, his mother’s words were already sinking in, and he could feel it, that small, fragile desire to believe that maybe somehow they wouldn’t have to leave, that maybe somehow everything wouldn’t fall apart after all.

“I know,” Isabel said, in response to Pilar. “I know it doesn’t. And I’ll never stop being sorry for it. But if there’s anything, anything at all, that I can do to save this family, then I’m going to try.”

Something dark and frustrated flashed across Armando’s face. “Why do you always act like you have to be the one to fix everything? To take control? This is _my family_ , I’m supposed to be the one that takes care of us, and you never trust me enough to let me do it! Why can’t you ever – why can’t you just believe in me, for once?”

“ _Amor-_ ” Isabel began, but Armando ignored her, storming off to the master bedroom, the door slamming shut behind him with a resounding crash.

That night Victor lay in his bed for hours, listening to music on his headphones to block out the noise of his parents’ raised voices echoing down the hall. He spent awhile looking at photos on his phone, flipping through the selfies that he and Benji had taken when they’d gone to the second hand store to buy clothes for Homecoming. There was Benji in the cowboy outfit shooting finger guns at the camera, and again in a felt bowler hat, raising one eyebrow and rubbing his chin like some villain from an old movie. Another of both of them in black suit jackets with hats and sunglasses, Benji’s arm on Victor’s shoulder, staring down the camera like the Blues Brothers. Benji in that silky zebra print shirt, almost completely unbuttoned, a long strip of fair skin visible, eyes closed and singing Bon Jovi into an imaginary microphone. Just the two of them, grinning, heads close together, in the nice clothes they’d finally settled on for the dance. Benji on his own, half-turned away from Victor, unaware his photo was being taken, a little smile on his face as he tipped down the rim of the white Stetson.

What had Benji said to him that night at the concert? _“I realized I want to be with someone that doesn’t make me feel anxious all the time. Someone who makes me feel like I can just be myself and that’s enough.”_

Victor had realized then that that was all he wanted, too, and that it was Benji who made him feel that way, even if it had taken him a while longer to find the courage to really accept that and act on it. It was Benji that made him feel like he could let go of all the expectations and the fear and the ever-present mask, and finally let someone see the real him that lay underneath. That maybe the real him was _worthy_ of being seen, being wanted; being loved.

Victor really, really wanted to just go all in on this thing with Benji. To be his boyfriend. To find out what it would be like to be himself for once and have that be enough for someone. To give that gift of acceptance to Benji, too, who apparently hadn’t gotten it from his ex. He wanted to know him, all of him, his imperfections and his bad habits, his dreams and his fears, the things that made him happy and the things that he loved.

But as much as Victor wanted all of that, he was afraid to let his guard down. What if Roger changed his mind about dropping the charges against his father? What if Isabel hadn’t really convinced him after all? What if word got out about the real reason that his father had lost his job, and he couldn’t find a new one in Brandon, and they ended up leaving anyway?

On the other hand… what if they left, and Victor hadn’t made the most of his time with Benji, and he ended up regretting it immensely?

He felt so conflicted. Part of him recognized that Simon was right about taking things slowly. So much had happened in just a week and Victor had had very little time to process all of it. In a span of about six days, he’d broken up with his girlfriend, come out to himself and three other people, found out about his mother’s affair and his father’s arrest, probably spent a bit more time making out with Benji than actually talking to him and figuring out where they stood, and been threatened with the possibility of leaving Brandon. It was an insane number of things to deal with all at once. He wished that he could just hide out in his room until someone else fixed everything and his life made sense again.

Although, honestly, had his life ever made much sense? It definitely hadn’t for the last few years, since his confusion had started and the tension between his parents had grown increasingly worse. He didn’t want things to go back to the way they had been. Not for himself – as terrifying as the truth about himself was, he was starting to feel glad that at least now he knew. It was difficult, and it would probably continue to be difficult for a long time, but there were good things about it, too. There was Benji. There was the acceptance he’d gotten from Felix and Simon. There was the whole big world of gay culture and community out there that Simon had described and that he hoped to experience someday.

And things couldn’t go back to the way they used to be for his family either. His parents had been so unhappy with each other for so long, they all knew that. Even Adrian could tell. Victor didn’t know what it meant for them but he knew that they had to change after this. It wasn’t just each other that they’d been hurting and making miserable all this time, it was Victor and Pilar and Adrian, too.

These past six days it felt like his life was being torn down piece by piece, like one of those rotten, water-damaged, mold-infested old houses on the renovation shows his mom liked to watch. A structure that unstable couldn’t be left standing, but if its foundations were solid enough, if it had good bones, then something new, something stronger and better, could be built up in its place.

It turned out that change, real, monumental, life-altering change, was a scary and painful process. But when the status quo had become unlivable, what other choice was there but to push through the change and try to make something better on the other side?

Victor just had to figure out what that new structure would look like. Who he wanted to be on the other side of this.

When he’d held Benji close earlier that day and said goodbye to him, he’d resolved to make the most of whatever time they had left together. Victor had spent so much of his life hiding himself because he was afraid and he didn’t want to live that way anymore. He knew that he wasn’t ready to be out to the whole world, but maybe he was at least ready to open himself up to Benji, to let himself have this one good thing for as long as he could. If they ended up leaving Brandon, then he would take those memories with him wherever they went. And if they didn’t…

If they didn’t leave, and he got to stay here and really be with Benji, then he was going do everything he could to be that better version of himself. It wasn’t just about caring for Benji or letting Benji care for him; it was about learning to care for himself, too, learning to accept himself for who he really was. It would take time, but Victor wanted this change; he needed it to happen. It didn’t matter how long it took or how painful it might be along the way. He was ready.

The following morning, Victor woke up early, his body aching with the desire to just pull the blankets over his head and go back to sleep after his restless night. But with consciousness came the memory of everything he’d been up so late thinking about, and he remembered his resolution. He was going to make the most of his time with Benji, whether he ended up leaving Brandon or not, and he was going to start trying to build that better life that he so desperately needed.

With that in mind, he sent off a text message to Benji.

_Hey, want a ride to school today?_

He showered and got dressed, and as he was making coffee and toast in the kitchen, Benji replied with a “ _Sure”_ , so Victor sent a second text to ask Felix to take Pilar to school. His sister trudged out to the kitchen a few minutes later, bypassing the toast and cereal on her way directly to the coffee.

“Morning. I, uh, have to stop at work on my way to school, so Felix is gonna give you a ride today instead of me,” Victor told her. He was prepared to make up further lies if she questioned him about it, but she seemed to be as exhausted this morning as Victor felt, and just nodded and sipped her coffee. Given how late into the night the shouting in his parents’ room had continued, he doubted any of them had gotten much sleep.

It was still pretty early when Victor pulled his truck up in front of Benji’s house, but Benji was already waiting for him, sitting on the swinging bench seat on his porch with a book in one hand and a thermos in the other. As he walked up to join Victor in the car, Victor found his heart rate picking up just a bit with nerves. _This is good,_ he reminded himself, _this is me taking another step toward being okay with who I am._

Benji was wearing his leather jacket, pulled on over a dark red sweater, and his cheeks were a little rosy from the wind, which had some bite to it that morning. There was no one out on the street to see them, so Victor leaned over, gave Benji a quick kiss hello. When he pulled back, Benji’s eyes were bright, a smile turning up the corners of his mouth.

“ _Buenos dias_ ,” Benji said, with pretty decent pronunciation. “ _Cómo estás_ _esta ma_ _ñana_ _?_ ”

Victor shrugged. “ _Pues,_ _aquí nomás._ _Con un poco_ _de sue_ _ño,_ _porque n_ _o dormí bien anoche.”_

“You didn’t sleep well, so you’re tired?” Benji confirmed, and Victor nodded. “Awesome, maybe I won’t fail my Spanish test today after all… but, uh, that sucks. Is everything okay?”

“Just the usual. My parents were screaming at each other until about two in the morning last night. Maybe if I’m lucky I can take a nap in my car in between basketball practice and my shift at Brasstown.”

“Well, you know who to ask if you need an extra strong cappuccino to get you through closing later. For you, I’ll even throw in some badly-drawn, probably unidentifiable foam art free of charge.”

Victor laughed. “Hey, c’mon. You’re starting to get pretty good at it. Remember that owl you did last week? I could even tell that it was a bird.”

“Only after I pointed out the beak to you,” Benji argued, shaking his head. “So, this is very nice of you and I’m definitely not complaining, but was there a reason you wanted to see me this morning?”

“Yeah. I uh… I wanted to talk to you.” Victor tried to calm himself, doing his best to keep his hands still. The urge to wring them, or to fidget with something, was difficult to resist. “Last night my mom said that she went to talk to my dad’s boss, Roger, the guy she had the affair with, and she said that he’s going to drop the charges against my dad. Right now I don’t really know if that’ll happen or not, and even if he does drop the charges and let my dad resign rather than firing him, it doesn’t necessarily mean my dad will be able to find a new job here. People might still find out what really happened. I’m trying not to get my hopes up too much, in case it doesn’t work out, but… there is a chance now that we might stay.”

“Victor,” Benji breathed, voice soft and hopeful, sparking an answering emotion in Victor that he was so scared to let himself feel, in case this all fell apart on them later. “That’s – I mean, I know it’s not a sure thing, but that’s amazing. That’s such good news.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is,” Victor agreed slowly, cautiously. “So… you know how yesterday we both said that we didn’t want to waste any more time? Well, I was thinking about that, and what it meant, and I think that… that I want to keep doing what we’ve been doing lately. Like, talking, spending time together, kissing… all of it. Whether I leave or not, I don’t want to miss out on being with you, because – because you make me really happy.” He bit his lip nervously, remembered the words that Benji had used. “Because you make me feel like I can be myself, and that’s enough.”

Benji’s hand crossed the space between them on the seat to cover Victor’s, interlacing their fingers. From the look in his eyes, Victor could tell that he’d recognized the phrase Victor had used as his own. “That’s… that’s how you make me feel, too,” Benji said. The early morning light was dim and gray, but it still seemed to ignite something in Benji’s eyes, something too luminous and beautiful to look away from. “I wanted to say that to you before, on that night, but things were… different then.”

“Yeah. I know, and I’m glad things have changed since then. At least, the way they’ve changed between us. But the thing is-” Victor swallowed hard, hoped that this wouldn’t be enough to scare Benji away from him, to ruin this new thing before it even really got started. “The thing is, I’m not ready for everyone to know that I’m… gay. It’s still hard for me to even say it out loud when it’s just the two of us and, well – you’ve seen what I’m like when there’s other people around. I know I’m not ready for a real, out and proud, public gay relationship. I’m really sorry. I wish I could be more like you, more open and proud of who I am, but… I just don’t feel that way yet.”

Benji squeezed his hand tight. “Victor, you don’t have to apologize for that. I know yesterday you said you’ve been worried that I’d want you come out to everyone, but I would never ask you to do that. Coming out is _your_ thing, you get to decide when to do it. No one else can decide that for you, including me. If you end up staying in Brandon and we decide we want to be together more long-term, then we can figure out what that would mean for us. But I promise that I’ll never try to pressure you into coming out before you’re ready, okay? You don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

“So keeping this thing with us a secret… that won’t bother you?”

“Look, I’m not going to lie and say that it won’t be hard. It is hard to be near you and act like we’re just friends. I wouldn’t be okay with things staying like that forever. But right now we have no idea how much time we’ll have together, and even if you stay, I get that this situation is complicated. So keeping this a secret is kind of the only option we have right now. It’s okay, though, because it’s worth it to me, if it means I get to have you.”

It was impossible to put into words just how grateful Victor felt in that moment. He was so thankful for Benji’s patience, and kindness, and understanding; for the strong yet gentle way he was holding Victor’s hand; for always creating a safe space for just the two of them, a space where Victor could let go of all his fears and be himself. He didn’t know how to express all of that, so he just kissed Benji instead, his free hand cupping the side of Benji’s face, and tried with that touch to convey everything he wished he could say. Benji kissed him back, and they both got a little caught up in the moment, until finally Victor remembered that he’d actually come over there to pick Benji up for school, and they were going to be late if they didn’t leave right away.

As he drove, Victor said, “I know I’m not really proud of who I am yet, like you are, but… I _want_ to be. I think that maybe I can be, eventually, I just need a little time.”

The warmth in Benji’s smile was a gift, something that Victor wanted to keep forever. “That’s all it takes, Victor. Just wanting to love yourself is where it all starts.”

“So, Benji’s going to sit with us at lunch,” Victor told Felix later that day, as they walked down the hallway toward the cafeteria. “But I’m not ready to tell other people about me yet, so please don’t act weird or say anything about, you know, all of _that stuff_ -” Victor waved his hand in a vague gesture meant to indicate gayness, “okay? I have a feeling this is going to be super awkward. It’s probably a huge mistake. I don’t even know what I was thinking when I asked him to join us, I should’ve just eaten in my car like every other day this week.”

“Ah, so that’s where you’ve been,” Felix said. “I was thinking maybe you’d taken to getting high behind the bleachers with the stoner kids, like, in order to drown your sorrows or whatever.”

“Aren’t you supposed to drown your sorrows in booze?” Victor asked, and then winced as they turned a corner and Benji came into view, standing at his locker and typing something into his phone. Thank god he wasn’t within hearing distance of Victor’s comment. The last thing he wanted was to accidentally make Benji really uncomfortable by bringing up a painful subject right before what was already sure to be an extremely awkward meal with Victor’s group of friends. He was so nervous that something was going to go wrong, that he’d say something dumb like his comment just then about drinking, or that one of his friends would, or that some little thing would make him freak out again. But he was trying to be a braver person now, and he couldn’t do that by running away from every situation that made him feel anxious.

He stopped Felix with a hand on his arm before they got any closer to Benji. “Just act normal, please? As far as anyone else needs to know, me and Benji are just friends.”

Felix snorted. “Tell that to the twitterpated look you get on your face every time you see him.”

Victor paled. Oh god, he was completely obvious, wasn’t he? This was such a bad idea, everyone was going to take one look at him sitting there next to Benji and they’d all _know_ -

“Whoah. Dude. Chill,” Felix said, looking taken aback by Victor’s sudden panic. He put his hands on Victor’s shoulders. “I’m sorry, that was a really stupid thing to say. No one’s going to know, Victor. I’m your best friend, I know you better than anybody, and even I didn’t know until you told me. You’re going to be fine.”

“Are you sure? ‘Cause I could totally just eat in my truck for the rest of high school.”

With an eye roll, Felix turned Victor around and pushed him in Benji’s direction. “Nope. Can’t let you do that, buddy. This is for your own good.”

Lunch ended up being even more painfully uncomfortable than Victor could have imagined. His friends had all stared at him like he’d grown a second head when he and Felix showed up with Benji at their usual table. Jeremy hadn’t even tried to hide his discomfort at being within a few feet of an openly gay person, scooting his chair a little farther to the left in an effort to distance himself from Benji and shooting disgruntled looks at him from under his floppy bangs. Alicia, on the other hand, was her usual bubbly self, filling in the gaps in the conversation with well-meaning but sometimes awkward questions for Benji.

“You have to tell me all about your hair care routine,” she’d demanded, gripping Benji’s left arm with her hand and preventing him from taking a bite of his food. Benji looked at a loss for how to politely shake her off. Victor might have found it funny if he wasn’t dying inside the whole time from the embarrassment of having the most cringe-worthy friends on the planet. “Your hair is just so gorgeous. Can I touch it? Oh my gosh, it’s just as silky smooth as it looks!”

She actually ran her fingers through Benji’s hair before Benji even had the chance to respond, and Victor had to fight down the urge to slap her hand away. He tried to remind himself of Alicia’s good qualities; he was sure she probably had some.

Next to Alicia, Jeremy crossed his arms over his chest and glowered sullenly at his girlfriend. He looked like he was seconds away from opening his mouth to say something nasty, so Victor intervened before he could.

In his haste, though, Victor ended up saying, “So, how about that hair care routine! What, uh, products do you use?”

Benji turned to stare at Victor incredulously for a second, brows raised, and Victor wished for death. But fortunately Benji just began to explain what he did to get his hair looking so perfect every day, rather than drawing more attention to how incredibly stupid the question had been. Alicia nodded avidly and asked follow up questions, and then began to try and get Benji’s advice on her clothes and make up, at which point Benji really started to look like he was regretting ever coming to sit with them.

“Honey,” Feña said, shaking her head at Alicia, “I don’t think every gay dude is an expert on women’s fashion. He’s here to eat lunch, not give you a makeover.”

Alicia blushed and began to apologize profusely but Benji just patiently waved it off, sending a grateful look in Feña’s direction. A somewhat tense silence followed. Now that Benji’s sexuality, the elephant at the table, had been mentioned, Victor could tell that it was all any of them were thinking about. It was hard not to feel self-conscious, hard to fight the urge to flee, and Victor had to remind himself firmly that he was trying to be better now. Braver. He could tell from the subtle way Benji was watching him out of the corner of his eye that Benji was concerned about him, so Victor made himself sit up a little straighter and took a deep, calming breath.

“So… You guys have a basketball game this weekend, right?” Felix said loudly, trying to change the subject.

“Uh, yeah, we’re playing-” Matt began to say, but just then Jeremy cut him off.

“What, are you a queer now, too?” Jeremy bit out, his dark eyes directed straight at Victor.

Victor’s breath caught, his whole body freezing up in shock. _“What?”_

Jeremy sneered. “Well, you break up with one of the hottest girls at school and nobody even knows _why_ , and then out of nowhere you just show up with _him_. I mean, what else are we supposed to think?”

“I don’t know, Jeremy, maybe that they’re _friends_? God, what is your problem?” Feña snapped, more pissed off than Victor had seen her in a long time. “You do realize that the only reason the rest of us even tolerate you is because of Alicia. All you ever do is sit here and say shitty things and for some reason that nobody gets you seem to especially hate Victor. I mean, what the hell? What did he ever do to you?”

Something weird flashed across Jeremy’s face just then that Victor would have missed if he hadn’t still been staring at Jeremy in stunned horror. Jeremy kind of winced, like he’d been physically hurt in some way, body jolting, and then just as suddenly he was shoving his chair back and springing to his feet. He snatched up his backpack from the floor and stormed away, out the cafeteria doors and gone from sight within seconds.

Before any of them could react beyond Matt saying “what the actual fuck”, there was the sound of shouting coming from a couple of tables away. Everyone looked over to see Teddy and Kieran hovering by Mia and Lake’s group. Teddy had something in his hand, it looked like maybe a cell phone, and he was twisting away from Lake who was straining to grab it from him and yelling at him to return it. Mia and some of the other girls at that table were calling out to him to stop, but he ignored them, climbing up onto a chair to get away from Lake and holding the phone high out of her reach as he did something with it.

Everyone nearby had gone quiet, watching this scene unfold, so that even from Victor’s table everything they were saying could be heard.

“C’mon, Lake, we’re just messing with you,” Kieran said, getting in between Lake and Teddy. Lake tried to shove him out of the way but he was too big for her to move. “Why are you getting so freaked out? Who is it, anyway? You can have your phone back if you just tell us.”

“It must be pretty damn embarrassing,” Teddy crowed, still flipping through the phone. “I mean, what, is it one of the theater nerds? Does your mystery dude have, like, seriously disfiguring acne? Oh – oh holy shit, man, you’re not going to believe this!”

“Just give me my fucking phone back!” Lake shouted, her face flushed. Mia was standing next to her now, looking like she was torn between comforting Lake and trying to fight the boys in her friend’s defense.

On Victor’s right, Felix was perched on the edge of his seat, practically vibrating with the need to do something. Victor guessed that Felix was probably conflicted between wanting to help out the girl he liked and also not wanting to draw attention to the secret thing they had going on between them, which would no doubt upset Lake.

Teddy was cackling now, a loud, mean-spirited laugh. “Holy shit,” he repeated, “ _It’s Lone Stone!_ Look, check out these photos.” He tossed the phone to Kieran, who caught it, keeping it held high over his head where the girls couldn’t reach it. “I can’t believe she’s been screwing around with that geek. Talk about having some low standards.”

Kieran stared at Lake, looking dumbfounded. “You seriously turned me down for _Lone Stone_?”

“Lake-” Mia said, trying to wrap an arm around her friend’s shoulder protectively.

Lake looked like she was somewhere in between rage and humiliation, like in the next moment she would either punch someone in the face or break down sobbing and it was impossible to guess which one it would be. Victor glanced at his best friend, who was pale and frozen in place, hands clenched into fists against his thighs. People around them were starting to stare and whisper, glancing quickly between Lake and Felix.

Lake shrugged off Mia’s arm and finally snatched her phone away from Kieran. She swallowed thickly, a panicked, desperate look on her face. “No, no I-”

In an instant Felix’s face seemed to crumple, mouth drawing down as his brows turned up, more heart broken than Victor had ever seen him. From a few tables away Lake looked over and saw him, and something seemed to suddenly shift in her expression. The panic transformed rapidly into anger, and she shoved Kieran hard on the chest.

“Yeah, you know what, I did! I turned you down for Felix Weston, because – because he told me that he just wants me to be happy, and you know what? That little nerd makes me happy. Talking to him makes me happy, kissing him makes me happy, just making him happy makes me happy. And I don’t care what you think about it. I don’t care what anyone thinks about it, not anymore.”

There was a murmur of gasps from the crowd around Lake as she suddenly locked eyes with Felix and strode determinedly over to him. The second she reached him she put a hand on either side of his face and swooped down to kiss him hard, right there in front of everyone – and also somewhat uncomfortably close to Victor – and Felix kissed her back right away, standing up to wrap his arms around her waist and draw her closer.

The room erupted around them into cheers and catcalls, someone shouting “Way to go, Lone Stone!” and a number of people filming the whole thing on their phones. It felt like the climax to a cheesy rom com that Victor might watch with his mom and never admit to enjoying, like there should be a swell of sentimental music to underscore the moment. But as happy as Victor felt for his friend, he couldn’t shake off the lingering fear that was filling his chest with a cold weight. Jeremy’s words were still echoing in his head: _“What, are you a queer now, too?”_

But then, under the table, Victor felt Benji’s foot tap his, and he couldn’t help turning to meet Benji’s smile with a small one of his own. Maybe Victor was feeling a little inspired by Lake’s act of bravery; inspired enough to let some of his own fear go, at least just for that moment.

“Is it always so dramatic around here?” Benji stage-whispered.

“Well, you know we don’t do anything halfway in Texas,” Victor answered, laughing, and kept his sneaker pressed up against Benji’s boot. It wasn’t exactly a declaration of love followed by a passionate kiss in front of the whole school, but Benji was smiling back at him, so broad and happy, and that was all that mattered.


	20. Thanksgiving

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: internalized homophobia, mentions of infidelity, violence, and alcoholism
> 
> This chapter is a long one! Hopefully that will make up for the wait :)
> 
> I did my best to research Latinx Thanksgiving traditions in the US in order to write this chapter, but I'm not a member of that community, so if I've made any mistakes please let me know!

The week leading up to Thanksgiving was as uneventful as it could be, given what Victor’s life had been like recently. He’d done his best to catch up with his school work, which he’d gotten a little behind on because of all of the drama, and asked his English teacher if he could make up the assignment he’d missed. On Friday he’d been nervous to eat in the cafeteria again after what Jeremy had said, but he’d braved it anyway, although without Benji who was eating with his own friends that day. To his surprise Jeremy never showed up to sit with them. When Matt asked about him, Alicia admitted that the two of them had broken up.

“It wasn’t just because he was being such a prick yesterday,” she’d explained, in a shy, small voice, so unlike her usual self. “There was… some other stuff going on, too. He’d been lying to me and treating me badly for awhile. I don’t know why I put up with it for so long… Maybe I just, I dunno, turned a blind eye to all of his bad qualities because I didn’t want to see them. He was my first real boyfriend, you know?”

Feña pulled her in for a one armed hug. “Hon, you can do so much better than that asshole, you know that, right?”

Alicia had nodded, giving them all the best smile she could manage, and Victor was sure he wasn’t the only one in their group of friends that felt relieved to see Jeremy go.

On Friday night, Isabel put in some extra effort with dinner, making _churrasco_ with _mofongo_ , one of Armando’s favorite dishes. The five of them had all actually sat down to eat together for the first time since the news of Isabel’s affair had come out and for a brief moment it had seemed like maybe they’d be able to get through that meal without anything awful being said. It had been quieter than ever before, a tense, uncomfortable quiet filled with the scraping of silverware on plates and the creaking of chairs, but at least no one was shouting or crying or revealing horrible secrets.

At least, until they had nearly finished eating, when Isabel cleared her throat, eyeing the three kids, and said, “Roger did what he said he would. He and his lawyer cleared everything up today. All the charges against your father have been dropped, and he’s going to accept a resignation letter. So it’s starting to look like we may not have to move after all.”

When Victor glanced at him, Armando’s face looked like it had been carved out of stone. His mouth tightened into a thin line, and then he dropped his fork and knife with a clatter and stood, walking briskly away from the table. The sound of a door slamming in the hallway made Isabel wince. Without another word, she visibly fought back whatever emotion was threatening to overwhelm her calm facade and got up to clear away the dishes. The task of cleaning up after dinner was meant to be one of Pilar’s chores that week, but Pilar just stared over at their mother for a long moment, chewing on her bottom lip in thought, and finally walked away quietly to her room.

As tense as the dinner had been, Isabel’s announcement was still good news. Victor was trying so hard not to let himself get too caught up in believing that everything would work out, but it was impossible not to feel a huge sense of relief that things were a little closer to being okay. All the same, he reminded himself over and over again during the following days that it still wasn’t a sure thing, that there was still a good chance it would all fall apart on them.

Victor had been right about Coach Harris being very unhappy about the state of his hands when Victor went back to basketball practice, but he convinced Harris to let him play in the game on Saturday afternoon anyway, and they won, so all was forgiven in the end. The bruises and cuts from punching his bedroom wall and the blister from his accident at work weren’t so sore by that point, so it didn’t really effect his ability to play much. Worse was the way Andrew had given him the cold shoulder leading up to the game, and what he’d said in the hallway outside the locker room, out of earshot of the other guys.

“She won’t tell me what it was that you did,” Andrew had said, eyes narrowed, “but I know it was bad. I can tell that you really hurt her. And you know what, maybe it’s none of my business, maybe I don’t have the right to be pissed about it when I don’t know what actually went down… but I can’t help thinking that you got so lucky with her, and then you just went and threw it all away.”

Victor couldn’t really say anything in his own defense, so he’d just stared down at the floor silently.

Andrew shook his head. “You’re a fucking idiot to let her go, Salazar.”

Although Victor knew that he couldn’t have kept Mia as a girlfriend, should never have tried to have her as one in the first place, he couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment. If he’d been braver, maybe he could have chosen Benji from the start, and he and Mia could have grown closer as friends instead. But he’d hurt her, and possibly lost her for good, and Andrew was right. He was such an idiot.

Victor had been worried that Andrew would let their personal issues get in the way of playing again, but fortunately the minute they were on the court Andrew let all of it go, just focusing on winning the game. Isabel was there in the stands like she always was, a lot more subdued than usual, but wearing a green shirt to support the team, with Adrian at her side holding up one of her cheesy signs. Victor still found it hard to talk to her, to even look at her sometimes, but the fact that she was working so hard now to try and make things right was helping to ease some of the hurt she’d caused.

At work and at school that week before the holiday, Benji and Victor had begun to settle into a new normal. Whenever there were other people around, they kept a careful distance, rarely if ever touching each other, and only talking about safe topics. But once they were alone, like when they had a closing shift together, or when they’d hung out on Sunday afternoon at Benji’s house while his parents were out, they talked about anything and everything and made out for what felt like hours and it was all so good that Victor couldn’t believe how long he’d made himself wait to have this.

He met Amelia once more when she came into the cafe on Monday afternoon and Victor had been briefly overcome by panic at the sight of her. All he could think about when he saw her walk up to greet them at the counter was that he’d just been _in her son’s bed the day before_ , making out with him for a very long time, and that the evidence of that would be somehow written all over Victor’s face. Not to mention the fact that she seemed aware that there was something going on between Victor and Benji, and they were all in public now, and did she know that Victor wasn’t out? There was a small group of Brandon High School students sitting nearby, including a couple of sophomores, who were within hearing distance. What if she said something, or teased them about being more than friends, or…

But it turned out that she’d just popped in to say hi and order a coffee to help get her through another afternoon of grading papers. Benji made her a cappuccino, complete with foam art, and slowly Victor began to ease down from the edge of panic.

“Here you go,” Benji said, handing her the drink.

Amelia smiled. “A bee from my B. Thanks, love.”

Victor grinned at the cute nickname-turned-pun. “You’re getting pretty good at this, _B_. I could even tell what it was this time.”

“Gee, thanks. What high praise, _V_ ,” Benji said, sarcastically stressing the letter in the same way Victor had. He handed Amelia a lid for her to go cup. “See you later, Mum. Try not to fail anyone for using a mixed metaphor or a double negative or whatever your pet peeve of the day is.”

“I make no promises. Bye, boys, have a good day.”

Victor and Benji continued to call each other “B” and “V” for the rest of the afternoon, even though Victor insisted that no one ever called him that. Not that he minded when Benji did it. Benji could probably get away with calling him whatever he liked.

As they were wiping down tables after closing, Benji said, “Pass me that cleaning spray, V? This one’s almost out.” Victor handed it to him. “Or should I say Vic? You know my nickname now, it’s only fair I should get to know yours.”

“Well, it’s not V or Vic,” Victor explained. “My parents have like a thousand nicknames for me in Spanish. _Mijo, amor, cari_ _ñ_ _o, muchacho, flaco...”_

 _“_ _Guapo?_ ” Benji guessed, his eyes sparkling with amusement when Victor predictably blushed. So then Benji kissed him up against one of the tables and not much cleaning had gotten done for awhile after that. That night when Victor was going to bed, he got a text from Benji that just said “Good night, V” so on a whim Victor had changed Benji’s contact in his phone to B, and from then on whenever he saw it, it filled him with the warm, floaty, deliriously happy feeling that he was beginning to get on a regular basis whenever he thought about Benji. Or saw him. Or touched him. Or did pretty much anything at all Benji-related.

One evening later that week when Victor was out grooming and feeding the horses, he’d decided to try calling Simon again, and then he’d ended up hanging out in the barn for nearly an hour just talking and updating him on all of the Salazar family drama and his new secret relationship with Benji.

“Wow,” Simon said, after Victor had finished explaining everything that had happened. “I don’t even know where to start. I mean, I thought I had a pretty dramatic high school experience, but I’m not sure it can compare with yours. What – oh, okay, fine, I guess it’s not like he’s being blackmailed, but – uh, sorry, Victor, Bram’s here and he’s trying to give me a detailed rundown of all the ridiculous things that happened to _me_ in high school, like I somehow _forgot_ about all of it – okay, you know what, I’m just going to switch to speaker phone.”

“Victor!!” a very excited voice called out, which Victor could only assume belonged to Simon’s boyfriend. “Oh my god, I can’t believe I finally get to say hi to you! How are you?”

Victor couldn’t help feeling a little unsettled. “Uh, hi. Have you been listening this whole time?”

“Oh, no, sorry, I just came in the room a few minutes ago and heard Simon claiming that he’d had a drama-free life in high school and I just couldn’t let that fly-”

“That’s not what I said, I just-”

“You’re getting so forgetful in your old age, babe,” Bram teased.

“Yeah, ‘cause being four months older than you makes me such an old man,” Simon shot back, and Victor was beginning to wonder if maybe they’d forgotten about him.

“Um, guys?” he said.

“Shut up, Si, stop distracting me from finally meeting Victor,” Bram snapped, but it was clear from his playful tone of voice that he was only pretending to be annoyed. “This is so exciting! I’ve heard so much about you.”

Something uncomfortable twisted in Victor’s gut as he wondered just what Simon had told this stranger about him, but then he realized that it was probably pretty normal for Simon to share things with his boyfriend, and anyway, he’d told Victor plenty of things about Bram, so… Victor decided to let go of his discomfort.

“Um, yeah, it’s nice to meet you, too,” Victor said. Just then Beau whinnied nearby, no doubt feeling neglected since Victor was leaning on the gate of his stall without giving him any attention. He dug an apple slice out of his pocket and held it out for him.

“What was that?” Bram asked.

“Oh, I’m out in the barn right now at my house. That was one of the horses.”

Bram laughed. “Okay, so when Simon said you lived in a small town in Texas, he really wasn’t kidding.”

“Nope, he really wasn’t. Brandon is both very small and very Texan.”

“Please tell me it’s everything I’m imagining: cactus, tumbleweed, hot cowboys in tight jeans...”

“Oh, uh...” Victor stammered, no idea how to respond to that. His mind instantly flashed to Benji at the thrift shop, tilting down the brim of his Stetson and smiling teasingly at Victor. He managed to say, rather weakly, “Well, there’s cactus?”

On the other end of the line he could hear Simon laughing. “Slow your roll, Bram. The poor guy only just came out last weekend, I’m not sure he’s ready to talk about sexy cowboys with you just yet.”

Bram sighed. “Okay, okay. Sorry, Victor. Just know that I am _totally_ here for that whenever you are ready.”

Despite feeling a little embarrassed by the topic, there was no fighting the huge grin that spread across his face. He couldn’t believe how good it felt to talk to other people like him, people who acted like Victor being into guys was so completely normal that they could just toss it into conversation easily without even a second thought. The three of them were so different; they came from different places and family backgrounds, lived totally different lives, and yet this one thing that they all shared created such a powerful connection that it somehow overcame all of those other things that separated them. Talking to them somehow felt like talking to family.

In the end he probably spent close to two hours chatting with Simon and Bram on the phone that night, sitting on an overturned bucket and leaning back against the wall of the barn, idly stroking Beau’s long forehead whenever he dipped his head down over the gate to nuzzle at Victor’s shoulder. In his mind, though, Victor felt as far away from Brandon, Texas as he could be, listening to Simon and Bram tell him stories about their life in New York and reminisce about their own high school years in Atlanta. He wondered what it would have been like to grow up somewhere like that, if this process of coming out to himself would have been easier had his family lived somewhere more urban. If he lived in Atlanta like they had, would he already be out and proud, just like Simon and Bram and Benji?

He couldn’t help but express that feeling, telling them, “I think I’m a little jealous of you guys and Benji. You all have so much confidence in who you are. I wish I could just hurry up and feel that way, too, you know? Proud of who I am.”

“It takes time,” Simon said gently.

“You think I was always like this?” Bram asked. “I had a huge crush on Simon for pretty much all of high school, but Simon had no clue that I was into him. Honestly, he probably didn’t really know anything about me at all until we were seniors because I was so incredibly shy around him. He probably would have figured out that I was Blue from our emails a lot sooner if I’d had even the tiniest bit of confidence when we were together in person. It was just that my feelings for him and for guys in general really made me nervous, not because I was ashamed of being gay, but because I knew that coming out was going to totally change my life and the way that everyone else saw me. It took a long time but eventually I was ready for it. I came out to my family and I met Simon at the carnival, and from that point on I’ve changed a lot. I became a more confident person because I learned how to finally let myself just be me, not only anonymously online, but all the time, for the whole world to see. It’s taken me years to be as open and happy as I am now.”

After hearing Bram’s story and getting to know him a little better, Victor felt more comfortable sharing things about himself with him. They talked about his family problems and this new thing he was starting with Benji, Simon and Bram offering some advice but mostly just listening, and it was such a relief to have someone to talk to about it. There were some things related to his feelings for Benji that he couldn’t just say directly to Benji, and lately Felix was so wrapped up in his new, finally official relationship with Lake that Victor hadn’t seen much of him. It also helped that Simon and Bram understood a lot more of what Victor was going through than Felix would have.

“Thanks guys,” Victor said, when the conversation was finally starting to wind down. “You have no idea how good it is to have someone to talk to about all of this.”

Bram’s voice was full of warmth when he said, “Oh, I think we have some idea. Don’t we, Jacques?”

“Yeah, pretty sure we do,” Simon answered, and Victor could hear the smile in his words. “Feel free to call us anytime, okay Victor? We’re here for you.”

“Now that Simon is a _gay elder_ , it’s his duty to look out for the youth,” Bram said, giggling a little.

“I prefer the term _‘gay sherpa’_ , thanks very much.”

“You guys are the best. Seriously.” Victor felt ten times lighter now, like so much of his stress and anxiety had been lifted away just by this one conversation. “Thank you so much.”

When he got back inside the house, there were raised voices in the kitchen, Isabel and Pilar screaming at each other again, and his dad was hidden away in his room, and Adrian was sitting on the living room floor surrounded by a pile of toys that he was barely even playing with, just scooting a car around absently. Victor went and sat down next to him and tried to distract both of them from the thick tension that filled the entire house. It felt like it was threatening to work its way inside of him, to wrap itself heavy and tight around his heart, but Victor remembered how he’d felt back in the barn, the comfort Simon and Bram had provided, and he crafted the memory into a shield to hold tightly to himself.

Victor was really dreading Thanksgiving this year, and he could tell that he wasn’t the only one. The five of them climbed into the car to head out to Tio Sebastian and Tia Kati’s house in their nice clothes, sitting down and buckling themselves into their seats in silence, and hardly a single word was spoken the entire forty five minute drive over to the Dallas suburb where his _tios_ lived. The one saving grace was texting with Benji, who was also stressed out about his own family’s Thanksgiving celebration, and so the two of them had been sending each other stupid memes and links to songs and stuff like that to help keep themselves distracted.

 _Dad just got back from the airport with Isaac… and apparently Isaac decided it would be_ _a_ _fun surprise to bring his new girlfriend along without telling any of us_ (This was followed by a GIF of a guy facepalming)

 _omg that’s crazy_ 😨😨

 _Does she seem nice at least_ _?_

 _That remains to be seen_ _… how are things on your end?_

 _About 5 min left on_ _a_ _45 min drive, still no one has said anything. Mom and dad keep passive aggressively changing the radio stations on each other tho which is so fun_

 _Yikes, awkward…_ 🙁

 _Tammy, the new gf, seemed ok at first. But now she’s trying to bond with_ _my_ _mom over British stuff and won’t shut up about the royal family, and m_ _u_ _m hates everything about them, so it’s both awful and kinda hilarious to listen to_

 _Note to self, never talk about the queen with_ _your_ _mom_

_I think for you she might be willing. After you left the other day, she said, and I quote, ‘he’s such a sweet young man’ lol_

_well, she’s not wrong. You are very sweet ❤️_

_Aww, thanks_

_I think you’re very sweet too 😉_

“Who are you texting?” Pilar asked, breaking the silence in the car at last. Victor jumped a little, startled out of his conversation with Benji, and looked up to find her staring at him with narrowed eyes.

“Felix,” Victor lied.

“ _Felix?”_ she echoed disbelievingly. “What’d he say to make you blush like that?”

“Nothing. I’m not blushing.” He hated the fact that he could feel his face getting even hotter now, and tried to ignore the curious look his mom was sending him in the rear view mirror.

Pilar seemed like she was ready to pursue this line of questioning further, but just then Armando pulled up outside the large, two story house that belonged to Tio Sebastian and Tia Kati, and they all climbed out of the car to head inside. Tia Kati and the twins, Diego and Santiago, met them at the door, Kati exchanging kisses with everyone as they entered, and the boys immediately dragged Adrian off to play with them. There was music and lively voices speaking in rapid fire Spanglish coming from down the hallway, where Victor could see a lot of his relatives were already gathered, moving around between the kitchen and living room.

It was just his dad’s side of the family, which included his abuelos and Armando’s three siblings, Nicolas, Sebastian, and Ileana, and their families. Altogether there were about sixteen people present, which didn’t seem like much for such a big house, but once the little kids were running around and the adults were talking loudly over the music, it felt like a lot. Nearly all of Isabel’s family lived in Puerto Rico, with the exception of her sister Pamela and her family, and they usually traveled to Indiana to celebrate the holiday with Pamela’s in-laws. Victor knew his mom always felt out of place at Salazar family gatherings, partly because she and Ileana’s husband Dave were the only non-Colombians, and partly because of the strained relationship between Isabel and Abuela Nati.

The only other teenagers present were Dylan, Sebastian and Kati’s son, who was the same age as Pilar, and Dylan’s younger sister Sofia, who was twelve. Normally the four of them would end up hanging out during family get-togethers, but Pilar still had a suspicious glint in her eye, so when she went to join their cousins in the rec room downstairs, Victor let himself get swept away to the kitchen by Abuela Nati and his tias, who all gave him hugs and kisses and refused to let him help in any way with the food preparation. It was crowded and warm in there, the women all bustling around chopping and mixing and seasoning things, and of course it didn’t take more than a few seconds before one of them was asking about Mia.

“Oh, she’s fine,” he deflected, and quickly changed the topic by asking his Tia Ileana about Emma, her nine-month old baby, which kept everyone talking for quite a while.

Eventually he managed to snag a knife and cutting board and helped out dicing tomatoes and onions for the rice Kati was making, despite his abuela complaining that he should be out relaxing with the other kids. Victor ended up staying in the kitchen for as long as he could, helping with the cooking and listening to the gossip about distant relatives and people from church. Isabel joined them for a bit, but seemed even more uncomfortable being around Abuela Nati than usual, and took the excuse of caring for baby Emma to escape back out to the living room.

“Victor!” Abuelo Tito exclaimed in surprise, when he came out to refill his glass of water. “What are you doing in here? _Ven a ver el partido con nosotros._ ”

Once Tito got a hand on Victor’s arm, there was no resisting, so he ended up out in the living room watching the soccer game with his abuelo and Tio Sebastian. Victor liked soccer, but didn’t find it as interesting as basketball, and it was hard to pay attention when he could see his father and Tio Nicolas sitting out in the dining room, talking in low voices and frequently topping off each other’s glasses with the bottle of rum that was placed between them. The longer Victor watched them, the more concerned Nicolas’ expression became, and the darker the look in Armando’s eyes.

To distract himself from whatever was going on with his father, Victor pulled out his phone and checked the new messages from Benji, careful to keep his screen directed away from his uncle.

 _Stuck in the kitchen peeling potatoes while Dad and Isaac work on the turkey, and I swear to god if I have to listen to another minute of fantasy football tactics I will try to kill both of them with this peeler_ 🔪🔪

_Oh god how can they still be talking about something so boring???_

Victor bit his lip to stop from smiling too broadly and sent a quick reply.

_I’ve been forced into some sports-themed manly bonding time over here too, but at least no one’s trying to ask me about Mia anymore, so I’ll take that as a win I guess?_

Victor had barely even touched the send button when Tio Sebastian leaned over, slapping a hand on Victor’s shoulder. “Who’s that you’re texting? Must be _tu novia_ , right? I see that little _sonrisa_ you got over there.”

Tito perked up at this, even going so far as to look away from the game for a second. “ _Cómo está ella?_ ”

“ _Bien, bien,_ ” Victor said, trying to plaster a convincing smile onto his face. He searched his brain desperately for something more to say when Tito and Sebastian continued to wait for him expectantly. “Mia’s, um… she’s… spending today with her dad and his new fiancee.”

Pilar and Dylan walked into the room just then, to Victor’s dismay, and she gave him a confused look. “How the hell would you know what she’s doing today? Are you guys even talking anymore?”

“ _Qué pasó?_ Did you two have a fight?” Abuelo Tito asked.

“No, everything’s-” Victor rushed to say, but before he could get the lie out, Pilar cut in again.

“Victor didn’t tell you?” she asked, leveling Victor with a confrontational stare. “They broke up last week.”

Victor felt torn between panicking over the disappointed looks on his relatives’ faces and wanting to drag his sister off down the hallway to shout at her for sticking her nose into his business yet again. Why did she always have to get in the middle of everything? Why couldn’t she just let them all have one day of peace?

“Ah, Victor, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Tio Sebastian said sympathetically. “I’m sure you’ll find another nice girl soon, though. A basketball star like you must be pretty popular with the ladies, huh?”

Victor plastered a small, uncomfortable smile on his face and nodded. Although Armando and Nicolas were a little ways away from the rest of them, apparently they were close enough to have overheard Pilar’s announcement. Armando blinked at Victor in surprise, his glass frozen halfway to his lips.

“You and Mia broke up?” he asked. “But – you never said anything...”

There was a strangely hurt look on his father’s face that Victor didn’t quite know how to interpret. He wondered if maybe Armando was upset that Victor hadn’t confided in him, or if his father was assuming that Victor and Mia’s break up was somehow related to everything going on with their family, and it was maybe sadness or guilt that was darkening his gaze now.

“I just – I didn’t know what to say… it’s not really a big deal,” Victor said half-heartedly. Everyone else was staring at him like it _was_ a big deal, though, and it made him want to get as far away from all of them as he could.

Tito just shook his head sadly. “ _Qué lástima_ … it was so good to finally see you with a nice girl. _Bueno_ , there are plenty of other fish in the sea, _verdad_? If you’re anything like your father was at your age, I’m sure it won’t take you long to find a new _novia_.”

There was nothing Victor wouldn’t have given to be somewhere else, far, far away, from his family at that moment. Their expectations already felt impossibly heavy to bear, and yet they seemed to weigh him down more and more by the moment. The larger they grew the smaller Victor felt. The truth about himself was caged within his heart like a bird, beating its wings desperately but too weak to break free. Everyone was looking at him with a mixture of disappointment and pity, and he wondered how they would look at him if they knew. Would that pity sour and turn to disgust if they knew what he’d been doing all week when he was alone with Benji? That he’d been kissing and touching another boy? How much greater would their disappointment in him grow if they knew that he would never have another girlfriend? That he would never be the person they expected him to be?

“Armando sure did go through them quickly back then,” Tio Sebastian said with a laugh, filling in the awkward pause in conversation when Victor failed to reply to Abuelo Tito. “There was a new girl every week, at least until Isabel showed up, and that put an end to all that. Then it was just Isabel this and Isabel that, oh she’s so beautiful, oh she’s such a great musician, and on and on.” He nudged Victor in the side, winking. “I bet pretty soon you’ll find someone just like that, and then you’ll forget all about this Mia.”

Some part of Victor wanted to say that he had, he _had_ already found someone like that, but of course he wasn’t brave enough to speak the words. Instead, he just mumbled quietly, “Yeah, I’m sure I will.”

At the dining room table there was a bang, and Victor looked up to see that his father had just drained the glass in his hand and set it down hard. Tio Nicolas was staring at him worriedly and didn’t try to give him a refill this time, so Armando snatched the bottle and poured himself another. He slumped back into his seat, glass in hand, an unreadable expression on his face. Victor had hardly ever seen his father drink like this and he found it deeply unsettling. He wanted to go over there and take the liquor away, but it would be a strange thing to do, and he didn’t think he could bring himself to approach Armando just then.

Instead he slipped away to the bathroom and sat on the lid of the toilet, reading the new text he’d received from Benji, desperate for something, anything, that would take away some of the anxiety running like charged wire through his body.

_Sorry, that sounds super uncomfortable. How did they take the news about the break up?_

Victor sighed, feeling a little shitty about yet another secret he’d kept from his family, and typed out a response.

 _I kinda didn’t tell them about it… I just didn’t want to deal with their disappointment when there’s already so much other drama going on_ _at home_ _. But Pilar went and told everyone about it, so the cat’s out of the bag now_ _anyway_ _. My sister is seriously the worst sometimes…_ 😠

Less than a minute after he’d sent the message, Benji’s reply came through.

_T_ _hat sucks. Is everything ok?_

_Turns out I was right about everyone being disappointed about it. But they’re all convinced I’ll have no trouble finding a new girlfriend soon._ _Wish I could tell them the truth. I know I can’t, I’m still not brave enough for that_

 _You were brave enough to tell me, and Mia, and a couple of your friends, right? It’s okay to not be ready_ _yet_ _, Victor_

_It’s hard tho, keeping such a big secret from all of them_

_I know… but you’ll get there eventually. It just takes time_

_How are things going for u?_

_I’m just hiding out in the garden with my mom now. Tammy’s a big football fan apparently, which my dad’s ecstatic about, so the three of them are all inside watching the game. I tried to sit with them for a bit, but I broke after_ _only_ _ten minutes. I don’t care how hot some of the players are, I just cannot make myself watch sports_ _😒_ _🏈_

 _A_ _lthough please don’t take that to mean that I don’t wanna watch you run around in your basketball uniform_ _😉_

Victor stared down at that little winking emoji for awhile, his heart rate picking up at the sight of it. The reminder that Benji actually found him hot was enough to get him pretty flustered. He didn’t really know what to say. He’d spent all of his teen years thus far avoiding flirting with anyone because doing it with girls had made him uncomfortable, and of course until very recently he never even would have considered trying to do it with a guy. Now that he finally wanted to be able to do it, he realized that he had absolutely no skills in that department.

In the end, he just settled on honesty.

_I’d really like that. You coming to see me play sometime_

Benji hadn’t been at the game they’d played on Saturday, since it was in another town and Benji had been working that night anyway. But the thought of Benji sitting up in the bleachers cheering him on left him feeling all warm inside.

_I’ll be there next time you have a game_

_I guess mom wants my help with something in the kitchen so I should go for now. Hope things get better over there_

Considering the way Victor’s father had been putting back the alcohol, and Isabel had been hiding out who knows where with the baby, and his relatives couldn’t stop talking about Victor’s love life… Victor kind of doubted this day was going to get any better. But he couldn’t stay in the bathroom forever, so he typed _“thanks,_ _you too_ _”_ and took a deep breath before stepping out.

Food was being carried from the kitchen to the dining room now, so Victor went to help, and pretty soon everyone was sitting down to eat. Victor ended up at the kids’ table in the living room even though he was the oldest of the cousins and probably could have sat with the adults, but he didn’t really mind. It was better than being forced to watch up close as his father got steadily drunker and his mother kept shooting half anxious, half irritated glares at him, all the while trying to pretend to everyone else that nothing was wrong.

After grace, Victor took a quick photo of his dinner and sent it off to Benji.

“Texting again?” Pilar asked, one brow raised.

“Just gonna put it on my Instagram later.”

She looked skeptical. “Mmhmm.”

“So why’d you break up with your girlfriend anyway?” Dylan asked. “She was really hot.”

Victor fought the urge to groan. Was his relationship with Mia all any of them cared about? “It just didn’t work out. Could we not talk about it please?”

“Okay, whatever. Sorry I asked,” Dylan grumbled, stabbing noisily at the food on his plate with his fork.

“He’s just grouchy ‘cause none of the girls at school will go out with him,” Sofia said.

Dylan glared at her. “Shut up, Sofi!”

Over at the adult table, Victor could hear Abuela Nati saying, “So Isabel, how are your piano lessons going? Are you still doing all of that?”

He looked over and caught the extremely tense set of his mother’s face before she answered, “I’m actually taking a little break from that right now.”

Nati smiled approvingly, something she rarely did where Isabel was concerned. “That’s for the best. I’ve always thought it was better for a mother to stay focused on her family.”

“Mami, stop that,” Ileana said. “You know I’m planning on going back to work once Emma’s old enough and Kati was working for awhile there, too. Things are different nowadays, women don’t have to give up their own careers and interests to have a family.”

This comment sparked an argument between Nati and the other women at the table, which Isabel stayed silent through even though in other circumstances Victor knew she would have been outspoken about it. On her left, Armando continued to sling back one large sip of wine after another. Dylan and Sofia were still bickering at the kids table, so Victor was pretty grateful when a distraction came in the form of Benji responding to the photo Victor had sent him.

_You guys don’t do mashed potatoes???_

In spite of all the raised voices arguing around him, Victor smiled, taking a bite of his turkey, and sent a reply.

_Nope, we’re beans and rice people. Goes better with the pavochon._

_You’re gonna have to explain, I have no idea what that is_

_It’s the Latino version of Thanksgiving turkey. It has better seasoning and extra meat inside (we go for chorizo), instead of that bread stuffing that everybody else eats. I’ve actually never had it, is it any good?_

_You’ve seriously never had stuffing with your turkey? 😲 It’s pretty great once you cover it in gravy_

Benji followed this with a photo of his own plate, which looked a lot more conventional than the Salazar Thanksgiving dinner. Victor was just about to write a reply when Pilar snatched his phone straight out of his hand and started scrolling through the text history.

“Hey!” he snapped, reaching for it, but she leaned back in her chair to get away from him. He jumped up and it only took him a moment longer to wrestle it back from her, so altogether she’d probably only managed to look at it for around ten or twenty seconds, but he had no idea how much she’d been able to see in that time.

“You are such a liar,” she said. “There’s no way that was Felix. You have some new girlfriend already, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t,” he said, low and furious. “And what the hell do you think you’re doing, grabbing my phone like that? Can’t you just mind your own business for once?”

“Maybe I would, if I wasn’t constantly surrounded by liars all the time,” Pilar shot back, her voice rising. They’d caught the attention of some of the adults, who’d paused in the middle of their own argument to look over at the kids’ table curiously. “I am so tired of all the bullshit. Are you a cheater, too? Is that why Mia dumped you? _Who the hell is ‘B’, Victor?_ ”

His heart was in his throat, a pounding, aching, thing that was close to choking him. She’d seen the nickname he’d used for Benji’s contact in his phone, something that felt sweet and affectionate and private. And now Pilar was dragging it out into the open, where all of them might see it and judge him for it.

Everyone was staring at them now, all conversation at the other table gone silent. Even the twins and Adrian were finally quiet for the first time all afternoon.

“Pilar, stop it-” Victor said, half-pleading and half-threatening. He was so scared of what she might say, what she might reveal to everyone about their family problems, scared of how his drunk, miserable father would react if she did, and all of that fear was rapidly channeling itself into anger.

“No! Why can’t you just tell me the truth? I can’t take any more secrets, not after what mom did-”

 _“_ _Just s_ _hut up, Pilar!”_ Victor finally shouted, in a loud, aggressive voice that didn’t sound anything like his own. His sudden rage shocked him, and he could tell it had shocked everyone else in the room, too. Pilar blinked at him, stunned speechless for once, and then in an instant her eyes were full of tears.

“Victor, you can’t speak to your sister like that!” Tio Sebastian reprimanded him, at the same time that Abuela Nati said, “What does she mean? What is she talking about, Mando?”

Armando shook his head, his face twisted into a grimace, and beside him Isabel was pale and unmoving. Neither of them answered the question.

Frustrated, Nati turned in her seat to stare down Isabel directly. “What is it? What did you do?”

This was such a nightmare. Victor didn’t even know how to react to everything that was happening, to his sister crying, to the horrified looks on all of the faces in the room, to the fury inside of himself that had been so swiftly replaced by guilt and fear. All he knew was that the truth would make everything so much worse.

“It’s nothing,” he said, voice shaking, “Pilar’s just being dramatic, nothing happened-”

“No,” Isabel said, quiet but firm. “No, I owe them all the truth, Victor.”

Armando stared down at the wine glass in his hand, said nothing. Did nothing to stop her.

“I… had an affair. It was a mistake that will haunt me for the rest of my life, and I regret it more than anything, but that’s what happened. That’s what she meant.”

No one said anything, until finally Nati began to speak rapidly in Spanish, murmuring prayers and calling on god and the saints and whoever else for help, while Armando drained the last of his wine.

“How could you do such a thing?” Tito demanded, glaring in outrage at Isabel. “How could you do something like that to your own family?”

“That’s right, she had an affair with my boss, and then I went out and broke his jaw and lost my job,” Armando said in a strange voice that almost sounded amused, except for the unmistakable bitterness in the words. “And I’m the one that nearly financially ruined all of us and almost lost us our home, until Isa went running back to _him_ to save the day. So there you go. That’s the kind of people we are. Now you all know.”

Armando tried to get to his feet then, but his movements were unbalanced, and he stumbled a little, bumping the glass he’d placed too close to the edge of the table. It crashed to the floor and shattered, tiny, bright shards flying in all directions.

“Shit,” he swore, staring down at the broken pieces, and just like that all of the emotion he’d been keeping bottled up inside all day, the storm of rage and heartbreak, erupted outward. His face twisted and he slammed a fist down hard against the wall, shouting again, “ _Shit!”_

A terrible sound, like a sob but somehow worse, somehow more raw and painful, tore out of his throat as he rushed unsteadily toward the door to the patio and slammed it open, disappearing out into the gray afternoon light. No one tried to follow him.

Isabel stood up, her face wet with tears, but she wiped them hurriedly away and tried to pull herself together as best as she could. Her mask of composure kept slipping though, shaken by little tremors that she couldn’t seem to prevent. “I, ah, I think it’s best if I leave. I’ll take the children home with me now.” She turned to Tio Sebastian and Tia Kati, said with as much dignity as she could muster, “If you could, maybe, let Armando stay here and cool off a little… Or if it’s too much trouble, I’ll come back and pick him up later this evening…”

“No,” Sebastian said, slowly. “It’s fine. He should stay here and sleep it off.”

If Victor had imagined anything like this happening that day, if he’d ever imagined some horrible scenario in which the truth about his family was revealed to everyone, he would have expected there to be more accusations shouted and insults hurled. Something louder and angrier, and it would have been easier than this, than this awful, dead silence that followed them as he and his siblings and mother stood up, grabbed their jackets, walked down the hallway and out the front door, that followed them into the car, and all the way back to their own silent home.

That night Victor was lying in bed listening to music, to a song that Benji had sent him earlier in the day, and trying hard to lose himself in the sound of the guitars and the drums and the vocals. His brain was such a mess that he could barely even register any of the words the lead singer was belting out. He hadn’t gotten any messages from Benji in a few hours, not since the one he’d gotten in the car, when Benji had said _“Everything ok? You haven’t replied for awhile, but no worries if you’r_ _e_ _busy with family.”_ Victor had responded with _“Dinner was a total disaster. I can’t talk now. Things aren’t really ok, but I’ll explain later.”_

So he was a little surprised to get a new message now, one that simply said _“Are you home now? Could you call me if you’re free?”_

Victor wouldn’t have wanted to talk to anyone else that evening, not with the way he was feeling just then, but talking to Benji was different. He knew he wouldn’t have to hide anything or pretend to be something he wasn’t, the way he had to with almost everyone else in his life. Talking with Benji always made him feel so much better, even more so than with people like Simon and Felix.

Benji picked up right away. “Hey, thanks for calling.” There was an odd, rough quality to Benji’s voice, which was usually so smooth. He sounded a little like he had a cold, or like he’d been crying. Victor’s heart clenched with worry.

“Are you okay? What’s going on?”

“No, I’m not really okay right now. Sorry, I know you had an awful day, too, and you probably don’t need to deal with my shit as well… But Dani – my, uh, my sponsor – she’s working late tonight and I didn’t want to bother you but I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Benji, it’s okay,” Victor said, trying to sound soothing and not reveal how worried he was starting to feel. “You’re not bothering me. Can you just tell me what happened?”

“It’s so stupid. I’m just making a big deal out of nothing.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Either way you’ll probably feel better if you tell me about it.”

Benji sounded a little calmer when he said, “Yeah. Yeah, sorry, you’re right. It’s just that, uh, Tammy, she didn’t know anything about me. I guess Isaac didn’t tell her any of it, about me being gay, about my – my drinking problem. So all day she kept saying strange stuff, and it took me awhile to realize that she thought I was straight, so I told her I’m not and she was, I don’t know, kind of weird about it. Like, she didn’t say anything, but she just got so tense all of a sudden. And then later, after we’d finished dinner, she said she forgot to get her gift out of her suitcase, so she went to get it, and she… she brought whiskey. This bottle of something super expensive from Kentucky, ‘cause that’s where she’s from, and apparently her uncle is one of the owners of the distillery or whatever… so anyway, the rest of us got really uncomfortable, but no one knew what to say since it was this really fancy gift, and we all just let her start pouring glasses, until she got to me. My mom tried to say that I was too young to be drinking, so Tammy joked that a little taste wouldn’t hurt me, that’s what the kids did in her family, and so I had to tell her. That I’m an alcoholic.”

“Oh god, Benji, that’s awful. I’m so sorry,” Victor said, his heart breaking a little at the pain he could hear in Benji’s voice.

“Yeah. It really, really sucked. And it wasn’t just explaining it to her. It wasn’t just talking about the one thing everyone in our family hates to talk about the most, more than anything. It was that Isaac hadn’t thought to warn her. He hadn’t told her anything about me, not about the alcohol issue or being gay or that I’m into music or that I’m a barista or literally anything else. All day she kept bringing up stuff that he’d told her about my mom and dad, even some stuff about my grandparents, but there was never anything about me. And I just kind of realized… he’s ashamed. Of me. Of having such a screwed up brother.”

Victor was tempted to interrupt, to tell Benji that it wasn’t true, to remind him of all of his many good qualities, but something held him back, and as he continued to listen he understood that right now Benji didn’t need someone to argue with him. He just needed someone to be there. Someone to accept what he was feeling and thinking, not to challenge it. Benji _was_ brave and confident, and in many ways, much more capable of loving himself than Victor was, and Victor realized that this current low for Benji would most likely pass.

“Realizing that, and having alcohol here in the house again, even though we never have any around anymore, it’s… it’s really hard for me. It’s the kind of thing that I should talk to Dani about. But I can’t talk to her right now, and I just needed someone I could trust, someone safe, and so… yeah, thank you for listening. It helps. It makes the urge to do something stupid a little easier to ignore.”

“Of course,” Victor said. “Benji, whatever you need, I’m here for you. Okay? Just like you’ve been there for me so much lately. Is there… is there anything else I can do?”

“Thanks, Victor. I think… I don’t want to talk about all of it anymore. I kind of needed to get that out there, and now I’d really like to just forget that today ever happened. What about you? You said earlier that things didn’t go well for you guys either. Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Honestly, no. I will tell you later, but not right now. Forgetting that this day ever happened sounds pretty amazing to me, too.”

“I don’t really want to be alone right now, so could we just, like, hang out on the phone for a while and pretend that none of that awful, heavy bullshit in our lives exists?”

“Yeah. I am definitely down for that.”

Victor spent the next several hours just lying on his back in bed, the sound of Benji’s soft, familiar voice in his ear, as they talked about nothing, or sometimes played each other a bit of music, or now and then just let a quiet pause linger between them, comfortable and peaceful. The heartache and the stress of the day were nowhere near gone, but they had been set aside somewhere else for later, somewhere that they couldn’t touch them that night.


	21. Who the Hell Is B?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: mild description of anxiety/panic attack, brief mention of infidelity

The day after Thanksgiving, Tio Nicolas showed up at their house. From the kitchen, Victor could hear him explaining to Isabel that Armando would be staying with him for awhile rather than with Sebastian, and that he’d just come to pick up some of Armando’s stuff. Isabel didn’t say much in response, just asked Nicolas to take a seat in the living room while she went to pack a bag. Victor was in the middle of making quesadillas for lunch and nearly burned the one he was grilling, frozen in place by what he’d heard, by what it might mean. An icy pang of fear stabbed through his chest, made his heart stutter.

Was this it? Was this the end of his parents’ marriage?

It wasn’t like Victor didn’t know any families who’d been through a divorce. His Tio Nicolas, for one, had split up with his wife a few years ago, so Victor’s cousins Dylan and Sofia bounced back and forth between their dad’s house near Dallas and their mom’s in Fort Worth. And there was also Matt, who lived with his mom and step-dad, and of course Mia’s mom had left and her dad was going to remarry soon, and so it wasn’t like he didn’t know plenty of other kids his age who’d gone through something like this.

He’d just never imagined that it would happen to _him_. Even with all of the bickering and fighting, which had been going on for years, his parents had always seemed so reliable. So solid. They’d both always worked so hard to take care of the family. Sure money was tight most of the time, but somehow they’d always scraped by, one way or another, and there were so many good days, too, mixed in with the bad. There were all the game and movie nights, the holidays and birthdays, the family dinners that were always eaten at the table, not in front of the TV like Victor knew some other families did, and the trips to Puerto Rico when they could afford it, and days out together at a park or a museum or the state fair. There was so much love in their home, despite their difficulties, and he had never once imagined that anything could ever happen to change that.

But it was happening now, wasn’t it? They’d all been driven away from each other for one reason or another; Isabel by her deceit, Armando by his rage, Victor by his secrets, and Pilar by all the hurt she was carrying from one too many betrayals of her trust in others. There was just Adrian who was still looking for someone to cling to, so afraid of being left behind.

Nicolas left with a duffle bag full of Armando’s things, not really saying much of anything to anyone. As soon as he’d gone, Isabel disappeared into her bedroom for a long time. Pilar had never even bothered to leave hers that day for more than a few minutes to go to the bathroom or grab a snack from the kitchen. When she did, she seemed to be trying to avoid Victor as much as possible. They’d accidentally run into each other in the hallway that morning, and she’d just glared at him and pushed past him without a word.

So Victor ate a quiet lunch with Adrian and sent Simon an update about what had happened the day before, and then it was time for him to go into work at Brasstown. The first few hours he worked with Angie, a Brandon College student who had just started working at the cafe a couple weeks prior and kept getting the orders wrong, so when Benji arrived to replace her Victor was even more grateful to see him than he usually was.

“How’s Angie been holding up?” Benji asked, probably taking note of Victor’s overall stressed out appearance. Victor just grimaced in response. “That bad?”

“I’ve explained to her like four times what the difference is between a macchiato and a cappuccino she still makes them exactly the same way,” Victor grumbled.

Benji laughed. “Well, we can’t all be barista prodigies like you. You picked it up pretty fast, didn’t you?”

“I had a very good teacher,” Victor answered, smiling. Benji smiled back, looking a little worn out from the day before but still so perfect, and for a second Victor forgot where they were. He started to lean in to give Benji a kiss, but then Benji’s eyes went wide and someone coughed noisily behind them. Victor jumped back, his heart pounding, and couldn’t believe what he’d just nearly done in the middle of the crowded cafe.

A man was standing at the counter, saying “Excuse me, I’d like to order now”, so Benji went to deal with him while Victor raced away to the storage room to try and calm himself down.

A short while later Benji came to find him.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Victor said. He was breathing slower, his frazzled nerves beginning to settle now that he was somewhere more private. “Sorry. I don’t know what was going through my head…”

“No worries. I am pretty irresistible,” Benji said, teasing now that Victor didn’t seem to be freaking out as much. He gave Victor’s hand a gentle reassuring squeeze, and then they both went back out to the counter to return to work. The problem was that Benji was right, Victor thought, as he went about steaming milk for a latte. Benji _was_ irresistible, and if Victor wasn’t more careful, he was going to end up accidentally outing himself, a possibility that left him feeling terrified.

It was a busy evening and Victor enjoyed the distraction, as he wasstill feeling stressed out by his family issues and his near slip up with Benji. He tried to keep a little extra distance between them just in case, letting Benji take care of most of the orders while he focused on keeping the cafe clean and restocking supplies.

That night after they’d finished all the closing tasks they lingered for awhile, sitting in a couple of chairs pushed close together in the locker room and talking about everything they’d been trying to forget about the night before. Benji shared a little more about his brother and the awkward breakfast they’d had that morning, and Victor told him all about what was said at Thanksgiving, about his father leaving, about his fears that his family wouldn’t be able to survive all of this intact. When talking about it got to be too much, and Victor started to feel like the walls were closing in on him again, Benji wrapped his arms around him and held him tight. It seemed like the embrace wasn’t just for Victor’s sake, that Benji needed it just as much, judging from the way his fingers fisted into the material of Victor’s shirt, and the way he exhaled so deeply, like he’d been holding his breath all day and could only now let it out. Victor wished for about the millionth time that he could stay with Benji forever and never have to return to his miserable home.

Their moment was interrupted by the buzzing of Victor’s phone and when he pulled it out of his pocket he was surprised to see that Simon was calling.

“Uh, sorry, it’s just a friend,” Victor told Benji, who had scooted away a bit to give Victor some space. “Is it okay if I answer real quick? I’m not sure why he’d be calling now.”

“Of course.”

“Hey,” Victor said into the phone. “Is everything all right?”

Simon sounded amused. “Yeah, I was actually calling to ask you that question. Your last message got me pretty worried, what with all that drama with your family. Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Um, I’m actually with Benji right now…”

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt anything.”

“No, it’s okay. Actually…” Victor considered for a moment, and then on an impulse decided to hit speaker phone. “So, Benji, this is Simon. Simon, Benji.”

“Okay,” Benji said, looking confused. “Uh, hi.”

“I have a confession to make,” Victor told Benji. “You know when you first moved here and you were telling me about the guy at your old school who came out and made a big declaration of love at the winter carnival?”

“…yeah,” Benji said slowly, and then he smacked Victor on the shoulder. “Oh my god, are you telling me this is _that_ Simon? _Simon Spier?_ ”

“Yep, the one and only,” Simon said, a little dryly, but there was laughter in his voice. “It’s good to finally meet you, Benji. I’ve been hearing a lot about you.”

Benji was staring at Victor like Victor had just completely blown his mind. “But how – what – how do you two even know each other?”

“So after you told me about Simon, I looked him up through your Instagram, and I messaged him asking for some advice. He replied and we’ve been talking ever since. I just… I didn’t have anyone else that I could talk to about how confused I was, and I needed someone who was like me, who would understand what I was going through,” Victor explained. Benji frowned a little, so Victor hurried to add, “I know you would have helped if I’d told you, but you were sort of… a big part of _why_ I was confused. So anyway, I’ve been messaging with Simon since then and he’s helped me a lot with all of this, you know… gay stuff.”

Simon said, “That’s me, always here to help with the gay stuff.”

Benji raised a brow at Victor. “I _confused_ you?”

“Uh. Yeah, you know… I mean, I kept trying to convince myself that I was straight, and then you showed up, looking the way you do, and being all cool and confident, and… uh…”

The grin that spread across Benji’s face just then was blinding. He threaded his fingers through the hair on the back of Victor’s head and drew him down for a long kiss.

“So, maybe I should call you guys back another time…?” Simon’s voice came from the phone that Victor had completely forgotten he was still holding. He jumped a little, nearly dropping it, and Benji laughed.

“No, don’t go anywhere,” Benji protested. “I am not missing out on the chance to meet the legendary Simon Spier.”

“Oh, I don’t know if I’d go as far as ‘legendary’…”

“You realize that people were telling stories about you for an entire year after you left, and for all I know, they still are. You definitely qualify as a Creekwood legend,” Benji insisted. “Actually, I’m sure you didn’t know me, but I was a freshman the year that you came out. I was still closeted then, but seeing how brave you were, it really inspired me. It helped me a lot when I finally came out during my sophomore year.”

Victor frowned at that, realizing the timeline didn’t quite make sense. Benji was a sophomore now, like Victor. But then Simon was speaking so Victor let it go; it didn’t seem like the right time to bring it up.

“That’s awesome,” Simon said, “I mean, honestly, I was pretty much just thinking about me and Bram when I posted that thing on Creek Secrets, but I’m really glad that I was able to make a difference for other people, too.”

Victor thought about the first day he’d met Benji and how Benji had come out to all of them so easily and fearlessly. It had felt like a life-changing moment to Victor, meeting another gay person for the first time, even if he didn’t realize that he himself was gay yet at that point. Simon may have been Benji’s inspiration, but Benji was Victor’s, and Victor realized that as personal as coming out seemed, it was actually so much more than that. It rippled outward from the individual, touching whoever else it came into contact with, and maybe even creating points of connection. It was a little bit intimidating and wonderful to think that someday, when Victor was finally brave enough to do it himself, someone else might be inspired by _him_.

Simon and Benji chatted about their old high school, and Victor considered what he’d just learned, and felt so grateful to both of them. Would he have ever had the courage to admit the truth to himself if it hadn’t been for them? He was already sitting so close to Benji, pressed tightly side to side, but he stretched an arm out around Benji’s shoulder and pulled him in a little further. Benji smiled and leaned into him, not missing a beat in his conversation with Simon, and Victor felt so warm with affection for them both.

“I can’t believe you never told me about making friends with Simon,” Benji finally said, when he and Simon had started to run low on gossip to exchange about their old school. “What other secrets have you got squirreled away?”

“Well, did I mention that I’m gay?” Victor said, and couldn’t help feeling proud of himself for being able to say it without any hesitation, for being able to make a joke about it. The process of coming to terms with his new identity was slow-going, but the more time he spent around people who were like him, people who accepted him, the more okay he was starting to feel about this whole being gay thing. Also, having a really hot guy pressed up beside him, who liked to make out with him on a regular basis, was helping _a lot_.

“Yeah, I did notice that,” Benji said, rolling his eyes, and they all laughed.

“You sound like you’re starting to get used to the idea,” Simon said. “Are you feeling better about it now?”

Victor knew he still had a long ways to go, but he really meant it when he said, “Yeah, I think I am.”

When Victor got home from work that night around eleven thirty, all the bedroom doors were closed, so he assumed that everyone had gone to bed. He was pretty startled when he opened the door to his own room and found Pilar sitting in his desk chair, arms crossed over her chest, waiting for him.

It was obvious what she wanted to talk to him about, and just the thought of her bringing up his text messages with Benji was enough to fill his whole body with anxiety. Despite everything at home being so fucked up, he’d had such a nice time with Benji and Simon that this sudden surge of nervous tension came as a shock to his system, replacing any remaining warmth from earlier with an icy chill.

For a split second before either of them spoke, the possibility that he could just _tell her the truth_ flashed through his mind. He remembered what he’d thought about earlier at the cafe, about what coming out really meant. He thought about how inspired he felt by Benji and how much he wished that he could be as brave as him, and Simon, and Bram. The words were there, resting on his lips, eager to be spoken. With the exception of telling Mia, every other time he’d come out so far had been followed by such an immense feeling of relief. Wasn’t it possible that Pilar would accept him? Wasn’t it _likely_ , even? He knew that she was more open minded than their parents were, that she liked to watch shows with gay characters sometimes, or listen to musicians that Victor was pretty sure were gay.

But he was also aware of the way that Pilar could never leave well enough alone, the way she was always bringing everyone’s dirty laundry out into the open. And maybe she wasn’t as liberal as he thought she was. Maybe she believed the things that they’d been taught growing up. What if she rejected him? What if she outed him to the rest of the family?

And just like that, the moment passed, and Victor swallowed the words down, buried them deep inside again, in that place within himself where all his doubt and fear and lingering shame resided.

“You’re hiding something,” Pilar said, not a question, just a statement of fact. “I can tell. There’s been something going on with you since Homecoming, maybe even longer, and I don’t know what it is, but I’m going to find out. I’m not going to let anyone else screw up this family. Not after everything we’ve been through lately.”

“There’s nothing to find out about,” Victor said, and the lie came out so easily it surprised even him.

It would take more than that to convince Pilar, though. “Bullshit there’s not. You’ve been acting weird, getting all freaked out sometimes, and then you broke up with Mia with no explanation. I saw how she was at school afterwards. She looked like you broke her heart. And now… Now there’s this mystery person you’ve been texting all time.” Pilar stared him down, a challenge and a warning in her eyes. “Who the hell is B, Victor?”

“It’s no one, just someone I know from work,” he said, and then wanted to kick himself. He’d blurted it out without much thought, assuming that maybe mentioning work was safe, since Pilar was less familiar with the people he knew there, but it was too close to the truth.

“It’s a girl, isn’t it?”

Pilar looked so sure of herself, of what she thought she knew about him, that it turned his stomach. “What difference does that make? It’s still none of your business.”

“You know, sometimes I feel like you and Mom are just the same,” Pilar said, her voice low with anger. “You guys have always been so close. You both act like everything’s great all the time, like you can fix any problem, like you have everything under control. But underneath all of that, you’re always hiding. Keeping all these secrets and lying to the rest of us about them.”

Pilar’s words hurt, they hurt so much, because Victor knew they were true, and there was nothing he could say to deny it. Instead, he felt all of his hurt and his anxiety channeling itself into an anger to match his sister’s, an anger that made his hands shake, his breath grow short.

“Get out,” Victor snapped, swinging his arm up to grab the door and hold it wide open for her.

“No,” Pilar growled, getting out of the chair, storming up to Victor and into his space. “Not until you tell me the truth-”

Victor closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath to restrain himself. He wanted to shove her out the doorway, to get her out of his face, but he couldn’t touch her, not now, not when he was so full of fury. “Stop it, Pilar, just leave-”

“I’m not going anywhere-”

“ _Just get out!”_

“What the hell is going on in here?” Isabel suddenly demanded, appearing in the hall and staring at them both in shock.

“Nothing,” Pilar said, just as Victor said, “She won’t get out of my room!”

“What has gotten into you two?” Isabel asked, looking back and forth between them with concern. “It’s not like you guys to fight like this. Is this about what happened yesterday? About what Pilar said about your break up with Mia?”

No one had mentioned it since Pilar had brought it up at dinner the day before, too distracted by Armando and Isabel’s secrets being revealed to everyone and then Armando leaving home. Victor had been secretly hoping that it would stay that way, that maybe by some miracle they’d all just forget about it.

“Yes,” Pilar said. “He’s keeping secrets, texting some new girl, and I know it has something to do with why he and Mia broke up-”

“ _That_ _has nothing to do with you_ _!_ ” Victor shouted, losing control of his temper. “Would you just shut up about it already?”

“All right, both of you stop! _Dios mio_ , this is the last thing I need right now, okay?” Isabel said, running a frustrated hand through her hair. “Victor, don’t yell at your sister like that. And Pilar, you know Victor is right. Whatever happened with him and Mia, that’s private, and you need to leave him alone. Now both of you go to bed, and I don’t want to hear any more fighting about this!”

Pilar glared darkly at both of them and then stomped off to her room, her door slamming shut behind her as it so often did those days. Victor was left alone with his mother, who was shaking her head at him in disappointment.

“You’ve always been such a sweet kid, Victor,” she said. “Since when do you talk to your sister like that?”

He hung his head, feeling a little guilty, but mostly still irritated by Pilar taking what had been a nice evening and completely ruining it. “I’m sorry. She just wouldn’t leave me alone.”

Isabel looked a little hesitant. “Do you- would you like to talk about it? About what happened with Mia?”

“There’s nothing to tell. It just didn’t work out,” Victor mumbled, unable to meet her eyes. He could see that he was hurting her by not saying more, that she desperately wanted him to trust her again, to confide in her. But he just couldn’t. He couldn’t tell her the truth, and with the way things were lately, with the damage she had done, he wasn’t sure that he would want to tell her anything even if he were brave enough to say it.

Isabel sucked in a sharp breath, nodding shakily, and attempted to smile. “Okay. Well. You know that I’m here, if you ever want to talk… _Te quiero mucho, cari_ _ñ_ _o._ ”

He swallowed thickly, couldn’t look at her. He just wanted her to leave, so he could close the door and finally be alone. But he knew how much she was hurting, and however betrayed he still felt by her, he couldn’t bring himself to just leave her like that.

“I love you, too,” he said quietly. The smile she gave him before she walked away to her dark bedroom seemed a little less brittle.

A week passed by before Victor saw his father again. The house had seemed so silent without Armando there and it made Victor realize just how much he’d grown used to the constant sound of his parents’ raised voices. As much as he’d hated the sound of their bickering, the unnatural quiet now had him actually missing it. In the meantime, the rest of them had tried to go on with their lives like the situation was normal, but he could tell that they all hated it. Pilar was even moodier and more withdrawn than usual, which was really saying something, and Adrian was constantly seeking Victor out for games or books or snacks, anything to get a little attention. And Isabel – well, at the start she’d been nearly as much of a recluse as Pilar, spending the first few days of Armando’s absence in her bedroom with the door closed, coming out to make dinner or do a little housework with puffy, bloodshot eyes, hardly speaking to any of them. It felt like sharing the house with a ghost.

And then one day he’d got up to make breakfast, like he’d been doing most days since no one else would do it, and he’d found her dressed, her hair and make up done, with coffee brewing and banana pancakes on the table. She was wearing her reading glasses and looking at something on her laptop, a notebook and pen laid out beside her.

“ _Buenos_ ,” he’d said, pouring himself a mug of coffee and stirring in some milk and sugar. _“Qué estás haciendo?”_

“Just doing a little research,” Isabel had answered vaguely. She pulled her reading glasses off and glanced at Victor a little nervously. “Uh, actually… I’ve been looking up some counselors. Marriage counselors. Your father and I talked on the phone for a bit last night, and he’s thinking about coming back soon, but… well, we know that we have a lot we need to work on, and maybe it’s not something that we can do on our own anymore.”

Victor stared at his mother in surprise, not really sure how to respond. She had never been this direct with him before about something as personal as her marriage. The problems between Isabel and Armando were something that they had all tried so hard to turn a blind eye to, and Victor had always felt like his parents’ refusal to acknowledge the problem was done out of an attempt to protect Victor, Pilar, and Adrian. It hadn’t worked, of course, the three of them had always been completely aware of the difficulties in their parents’ relationship and it had effected all of them in different ways.

Her confiding in him made him realize that this was a sign of her trying to change. That maybe it meant she was finally ready to face the problems between herself and Armando head on. And maybe she was changing the way she saw Victor, too, recognizing that he was getting older, that maybe he was mature enough to understand some of these things now.

“That’s… that’s great, _Mami_ ,” he’d said. “I think that’s a really good idea.”

Isabel had smiled, strangely shy, and when Victor had come to sit down at the table with her, she leaned over to kiss the top of his head. “Love you, _mijo._ Where would I be without you?”

A few days later, Victor came home from basketball practice and Armando was there, sitting on the couch with Isabel, the two of them speaking in low voices until Victor stepped through the door. His father had given Victor a subdued smile and a hug, and the feeling of constant, simmering anger just below the surface that Victor had grown so used to from Armando lately was finally gone. He just seemed exhausted now, with deep shadows under his eyes and the frown lines around his mouth were maybe a little darker than before.

That evening they ate dinner as a family for the first time in a little over a week. The conversation was stilted and awkward, no one really knowing what to say, but they were all gathered there _together_ , and it was a relief.

Toward the end of the meal, Armando put down his silverware, looked around at all of them solemnly, and said, “There are some things we should probably talk about tonight. First of all, your mother and I want you to know that we’re sorry for everything we’ve put you through recently. We’re going to try to do better from now on.”

“We love you so much,” Isabel added, her eyes bright with unshed tears. “We’ll do whatever it takes to make up for hurting you. And we know that you three have been so worried about the possibility of us moving away from Brandon, so we want you to know that we are working really hard to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

“What does that mean?” Pilar asked. “Did Dad actually find a new job?"

“Not yet,” Armando answered, a little tightly, “but I’m looking everyday, and I’ve been to a couple of interviews already. I’m hoping that something is going to work out soon.”

Pilar still looked a little doubtful. “So no one found out what happened? About the real reason that you lost your job?”

“No. Luckily, Roger has stuck to his story that he was mugged, and he accepted my resignation like he said he would.” Armando looked as though the words had left a bitter taste in his mouth. “As long as things stay the way they are now, then I think I should be able to find a new job soon and hopefully we’ll be able to stay here.”

Later that night, Victor sent Simon a message while he was out feeding the animals.

_Hi there, how have you been? Hope you and Bram are doing good. Sorry it’s been a little while since I messaged you._

_Everything’s about as fine as it can be over here. I’ve been really busy with work and school and basketball, but me and Benji have been hanging out a lot whenever we actually have a little free time. Did I tell you that he’s starting a new band? He met some other musicians at that open mic night last month and they finally found a drummer so now they’re really getting going with things. I can’t wait to check out their band practice soon. Maybe Benji will let me send you a_ _recording_ _?_

_My dad came home today. He was gone about a week. Him and my mom talked to all of us after dinner tonight and they said that they’re going to start trying to make things better at home. Mom even told me the other day that they might see a marriage counselor. They also said that dad’s looking for a new job here, and if he finds one, then we won’t have to move after all._

_I want to believe them, but it’s so hard for me to put my trust in them again. I’m scared of being let down. It would be_ _so_ _painful to believe that we’re really staying and then have all of that taken away from me._

_I think I’ve been holding back a little with Benji because of it, too. I mean, don’t get me wrong, everything is really good when we’re together. We talk about practically everything and we spend a lot of time making out but… even though it feels like this is becoming something serious, neither of us has used the “b” word yet (as in, boyfriend). I said I wanted to make the most of my time with him, and I do, so much, but I can’t stop worrying in the back of my mind about losing him. It’s hard to be happy when I’m constantly waiting to get my heart broken._

_Victor_

The next day Simon’s reply arrived just as Victor was heading out for a morning shift at Brasstown.

 _Hey! No worries, we’ve actually been pretty busy here, too. Bram’s dad was in town over the weekend, so we took him around to see the sights (even though he’s actually been to NYC a bunch of times on business trips, but we found him some of_ _f_ _the beaten path stuff to make things more exciting)._

_Yes, please send a recording of Benji’s band!! I would totally love to hear it._

_I’m really happy that your dad is back home and I hope that going to see a counselor will help your parents work through some of the stuff the_ _y’re_ _dealing with right now._ _I know how much you want to stay in Brandon, so I am sending all the good vibes that I can that your dad finds a new job there._

_I think it’s only natural to want to protect yourself from getting hurt, so I don’t really blame you for holding back with Benji, as long as you continue to be honest with him about your situation. You’re right that things might not work out and it will be really hard for you if your family ends up moving. So maybe it’s a good idea to wait until things are little more certain before you start throwing around the “B” word?_

_Love, Simon_

At school a few days later, Victor was putting some stuff away in his locker before he went to basketball practice when Benji approached him. They’d been hanging out more often at school lately, Benji sometimes talking with him between periods or joining Victor’s group of friends for lunch, but something about the look on Benji’s face had Victor instantly feeling tense. He looked around to see if anyone was paying attention to them, but no one was. Most people had already gone home for the day by that point, so there were only a handful of other people in the hallway.

“Hey,” Benji said, “can we talk for a sec?”

“It’ll have to be really quick, if I don’t make it to practice in the next ten minutes Coach Harris will make me run laps.”

Benji nodded. “Okay, but we should probably do this somewhere more private…”

Victor didn’t really know where to go at first, but then he remembered Felix and Lake’s favorite hook up spot, and led Benji to the utility closet near the gym.

“When I said talk, that wasn’t actually a euphemism for make out,” Benji quipped as the door closed behind them.

Victor blushed. “You said somewhere more private, so…”

“This is fine, I was just joking. Okay, look, I thought you’d want to know that your sister found me in the hallway earlier today and was asking a lot of weird questions. Like, are there any girls working at Brasstown and what their names are, and stuff like that. I didn’t really know what to say, so I just told her about the women working there and then, uh… then she said, ‘so none of them have a name starting with a ‘B’?’”

 _Fuck._ Victor was trying hard to quell the panic that had begun to rise up inside of him as Benji explained what had happened, but it was racing through his veins faster than he could stop it, and now his heart was thundering in his chest.

“Why would she be asking me that, Victor? Did something happen?”

He nodded numbly. “Yeah. At Thanksgiving. Remember, I told you that she grabbed my phone for a second and saw some of our texts? Well, your contact on my phone is just ‘B’. And when she confronted me about it the other day, I told her that B was someone I worked with, like a complete idiot. She’s convinced that I have some new secret girlfriend, and that maybe I cheated on Mia or something…”

Benji’s expression softened a little, still concerned, but he seemed touched by the nickname. He placed a hand on Victor’s arm, rubbing a soothing circle there with his thumb. “I don’t think she figured anything out yet. I know you must be really freaked out right now, but I don’t think she knows it’s me.”

Victor wanted to be comforted by that, but he couldn’t, not with all the fear coursing through him just then. “For now.”

“I know you probably don’t want to hear this, and I don’t want to scare you, but… Victor, she might figure this out. Maybe you should think about what you want to do. You could – you could consider telling her the truth.”

“I – I actually kind of want to, I really do, but I don’t think I can. Not yet. What if she outs me to my parents? They’re not like your parents, or Simon’s. We’re Catholic, we go to church pretty much every week, and they’re so traditional… You were at my birthday party, you know what they’re like. I’m so scared that – that they’ll do something awful when they find out about me.”

“Like what?” Benji asked, voice hushed.

“I don’t know, like, kick me out maybe? Send me to some camp to pray it all away? I don’t know. Fuck, Benji, I don’t know what to do-”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. I’ve got you.” Benji wrapped his arms around Victor and tugged him close. Victor wanted to push away from him at first, his panic making it so hard to breathe and for the first few seconds Benji’s embrace felt too confining. But slowly the warmth of Benji’s touch, the familiar smell of him, began to ease the fear just the tiniest bit, and Victor let himself relax a little, and then he leaned in, pressed his face against the column of Benji’s neck, and tried to catch his breath. “Whatever happens,” Benji said, “I’m here, okay? We’re gonna get through this together.”

They stayed like that for a long while, just breathing together, until finally Victor began to feel a little calmer. The stress wasn’t gone, but it wasn’t threatening to completely overwhelm him either, so it was about as good as it was going to get. He realized that he was seriously late for basketball practice, and Coach Harris would be pissed, but he didn’t care. He was still too freaked out to leave the safety of Benji’s arms just yet.

“I’m really scared,” Victor whispered, into the skin of Benji’s neck. He felt Benji’s arms tighten around him a little. “I wish I wasn’t, but I am. I’m still not ready for all of them to know.”

“Okay,” Benji answered softly. “Then we’ll try and keep this a secret until you are.”


	22. Baby I'm Burnin'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: homophobia, use of homophobic slurs (including the "f" word), fairly intense internalized homophobia, some mild sexually explicit content (still keeping with the Teen rating), frank discussion about sex/sexuality, description of a panic attack
> 
> I couldn't figure out a good way to split this chapter in two, so... here you go, have 10k words this time! Also, some of the content in this chapter may be triggering to some people, so please do check the warnings I've listed above and read safely. The chapter title comes from possibly one of the cheesiest Dolly Parton songs ever by the same name.

Since Armando had returned home at the end of the previous week, it seemed like he and Isabel really were committed to doing better. There were no more passive aggressive comments, no more shouting matches until late into the night, and no more horrible, life-altering revelations. Although they were still tense and quiet around each other most of the time, it was such a huge improvement from how things had been before that it was a major relief for everyone. They had even started going to see a counselor twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so Victor tried to be home on those nights to help babysit Adrian.

Pilar was turning over a new leaf as well, which was so typical of her. She had a tendency to become more withdrawn and angry the worse things were at home, but as soon as things began to improve, she’d start to lighten up again. You could pretty much gauge the stability and overall happiness of the Salazar household by Pilar’s level of moodiness. She was out with her friends more often since Armando returnedand didn’t just hide in her room all the time when she was at home. The only person she was continuing to avoid was Victor, hardly speaking a single word to him since their argument the other night.

While everyone else in the family was doing better, Victor was living in a constant state of anxiety, just waiting for the other shoe to drop. What catastrophe would hit them next? Would Armando fail to find a job? Would everyone in town find out that he’d been arrested? Would Armando and Isabel go back to constant fighting again at some point? Would Pilar finally make the connection between “B” and Benji and then reveal Victor’s biggest secret to everyone, leading to who only knew what kind of disastrous consequences for him?

There were times when he was tempted to just get it over with and tell all of them himself. It might be better than living the way he was, constantly on edge, never able to relax in his own home because he kept looking over at his sister and wondering if this would be the moment when she dragged him out of the closet against his will. The sense of living a double life, of hiding behind a mask, had never been stronger, and it was slowly eating away at him. At least if he told all of them before Pilar could figure it out he’d be doing it on his own terms, even if it wasn’t really the time he would have chosen.

But each day he found himself too scared to do it, and he just sat through family dinners and movie nights like everything was normal, like he hadn’t just been kissing Benji in his truck before school that morning or after closing at Brasstown the night before.

And then there was the thing that happened on Wednesday evening that week. After they’d finished eating dinner, Armando had wandered off to his room while Victor helped Isabel clean up the dishes. Pilar and Adrian were out in the living room, tucked into the sofa, Pilar flipping channels on the TV in search of something to watch. In the evenings when they were all home, it was common for them to watch something together as a family after dinner, so nothing seemed out of the ordinary until he heard the opening theme music for Queer Eye come on.

Victor was suddenly overwhelmed by a fresh surge of anxiety, rushing cold and sharp through his body, making him dizzy with the intensity of it. His stomach, still full from dinner, rolled with nausea. Was this Pilar’s way of signaling to him that she knew? It’s not like it was a show that she usually watched, so was this some kind of weird, indirect way of telling him that she’d figured it all out?

He put down the pan he’d been drying as carefully as he could with his shaking hands, and walked slowly over to the entrance of the living room. Pilar didn’t even look up at him as he approached, her attention half on the TV and half on the phone in her hand. Adrian was giggling at something that Jonathan Van Ness had just said and getting excited about the dog that was on screen. Victor just stood there staring at his siblings, waiting for Pilar to look up, for her to give some sign that she had done this intentionally. But when she finally noticed him, all she did was raise her brows at him like he was being weird. Which, admittedly, he probably was.

“What’s your problem? You wanna sit here or something?” She nodded at the middle cushion, where she’d put her feet up. It was the most she’d said to him all day.

“Uh, no. The armchair’s fine.” Victor went and sat in it woodenly, his heart pounding furiously in his chest. He remained perched right on the edge of the seat, his body thrumming with barely restrained energy, ready to flee at the first sign of danger.

For about a half an hour they all just sat there and watched the show like that was a completely normal thing for them to do. Isabel even joined them, laughing at what a disaster the house was pre-makeover and complaining about some of the suggested clothing choices.

“That is way too many polka-dots for one outfit,” Isabel said, and despite his ongoing mild state of panic Victor kind of agreed with her. “He looks like a dalmatian in that shirt.”

Pilar rolled her eyes. “Yeah, ‘cause you’re such a fashionista with your high-waisted mom pants and brown cardigans. Do you even own anything that isn’t an earth-tone?”

“You think I’m going to sit here and let a girl with more holes in her clothes than actual fabric criticize my wardrobe?” Isabel said, mock-angrily, and it was such a normal thing, his mom and Pilar bickering about stupid stuff, that Victor finally found himself beginning to relax a little. He couldn’t believe this was happening. There were actual gay people on the TV, a whole group of them, and they were talking non-stop about gay stuff and making light-hearted jokes about it and throwing around words like “queer” as if it was totally normal. Like it wasn’t the very same slur that Jeremy had thrown at Victor the week before and which had been echoing around in his head ever since. Like they lived in some fantasy TV world where no one would ever dream of using the word queer to hurt someone.

Victor wished he could crawl right through the screen into that fantasy world and just live there.

He was scared to let himself relax too much, still waiting for some sign of discomfort or maybe a homophobic comment from his mom or possibly Pilar. But Isabel and his siblings didn’t care, they didn’t seem fazed by any of the overt gayness on the screen, and slowly, with each minute that passed, Victor began to ease back into the chair, letting a little more of the tension out of his body. Maybe he’d been wrong about them. Maybe they weren’t as traditional and closed-minded as he’d assumed.

The words were right there, only a breath away from being spoken. He could just open his mouth and say them. Tell everyone the truth about himself. Say, “Mom, I’m like them. I’m like those guys in the show. I’m gay.” and maybe by some miracle it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

That was when Armando walked into the room.

“What’s this?” he asked, frowning at the screen.

Just like that, the fear and the cold burn of panic along his nerves and the nausea all came racing back. Victor’s breath caught in his throat.

Isabel froze as well, clearly noticing the note of tension in Armando’s voice. She said, a little too lightly, “Oh, you know, it’s that make-over show.”

“Queer Eye,” Pilar said pointedly. “The one with the gay guys that help people improve their lives by fixing up their houses and getting them fancy haircuts or whatever.”

Armando’s jaw clenched. “Put something else on.”

Pilar turned to stare at him in surprise. “What? Why?”

“Because this show is inappropriate for your little brother. Now please change it.”

“Are you serious? All they’re doing is helping this guy buy some new clothes for his wedding anniversary and, like, redecorating his house. How is that inappropriate?”

Armando let out an irritated sigh. “Pilar, I am not going to argue with you about this. Just change the channel.”

Isabel bit her lip, looking torn between supporting Pilar and trying to avoid a fight with Armando. “There’s only about fifteen minutes left, Mando. Why not just let them finish this episode?”

Although part of Victor appreciated the fact that his mom didn’t have a problem with continuing to watch the show, he also kind of wished that she hadn’t bothered speaking up about it. It was only going to lead to an argument, and not only that, but an argument about the topic that was the most stressful and panic-inducing for him. He really, _really_ did not want his father to explain why he found _Queer Eye_ so “inappropriate.” Just using that word to describe it was already bad enough. Somehow it almost seemed worse than if Armando had just come right out and used some homophobic slur. It felt colder, more dismissive; as though Armando found just the idea of anything gay too disgusting or offensive to discuss directly.

“Okay, fine, make me the bad guy,” Armando snapped, glaring at Isabel. “You really want to sit here and let Adrian watch stuff like this? What a fantastic parenting choice.”

For a moment it looked as if Isabel would continue arguing about it, and Victor held his breath, waiting for the inevitable fight that would lead to, but then she seemed to stop herself, pursing her lips and remaining silent.

“This is so freaking stupid,” Pilar muttered, getting up from the couch and tossing the remote with a noisy clatter onto the coffee table. Before storming out of the room, she snapped, “Fine, watch whatever you want. I don’t care.”

Shaking his head with irritation, Armando grabbed the remote and quickly changed the channel to a basketball game on ESPN. On the end of the couch, Adrian slumped onto the armrest, disappointment written all over his face. Despite Armando’s best efforts to get him interested in sports, Adrian continued to show zero enthusiasm for them.

“This is boring,” he complained in a quiet voice. “I wanted to keep watching the one with the dog.”

Armando said nothing to this, but he cut his eyes over to Isabel’s, shooting her a dark look which she ignored.

Normally Victor would have been happy to hang out and watch the game with his parents, but after what had just had happened, he couldn’t stand the thought of sitting where he was for even a minute longer and acting like nothing was wrong. He jumped up and Armando glanced over at him in surprise.

“You don’t wanna watch the game?”

“I, uh, I’ve got some homework to do,” Victor lied. He’d actually caught up with most of it earlier. “Adrian, you want me to read to you first?”

His little brother grinned and hopped off the couch, shouting, “Yes!” and then racing off down the hallway to pick out some books. There was something tense and lonely about the atmosphere in the living room as Victor left, his parents sitting there all alone now that Armando had driven the kids away. The part of Victor that was angry with his father for what he’d said felt a kind of vindictive satisfaction; he wanted him to feel some regret for it.

But a larger part of him just felt so lonely, too.

Victor had missed church a few times in the last month, what with all of the crazy stuff that had been going on in his life. He’d spent one Sunday coming out to Felix and avoiding his family, and that awful weekend after Thanksgiving, with his father gone and his mother hiding out in her room all the time, he’d run away to hang out with Benji at his house, which had felt like a safe haven of all things good, the way it always was when it was just him and Benji.

But now that Armando was back and they were trying to do things together as a family again, there was no getting out of Sunday mass. Ever since he’d figured out the truth about himself, Victor had been dreading going to church. It was like he had some crazy expectation that he was going to be struck down by lightning or something just for existing as a gay person inside those walls.

Of course that didn’t actually happen, but it might have been a mercy if it had. Instead he was forced to spend over an hour wedged into the pew between his parents pretending like he was completely fine when in reality he was buzzing with the need to get out of there. He’d thrown on a pale yellow dress shirt that morning that didn’t really fit him well anymore, the material too tight in the neck and shoulders, only adding to the increasing sense of being trapped and unable to breathe. The room full of parishioners and the walls covered in stained glass depictions of Christ and the saints seemed to be crowding in closer and closer around him as the service continued on.

Across the aisle, he noticed Manuel, a guy that Armando had once called _“flojito”_ just because he occasionally wore a pink shirt and wasn’t as masculine as some of the other men at church. Victor couldn’t help looking at Manuel and wondering if he _was_ gay. He was in his twenties and worked in town at his family’s real estate business, but that was pretty much all Victor knew about him. He had no idea whether Manuel had a girlfriend or not. Victor was fairly certain that his father didn’t know much about Manuel either, but Armando had still thought that he could somehow look at him and guess something so deeply personal about him. If it was just a particular way of dressing or speaking that gave it away, then was there anything about Victor that would expose his secret? Was there any clue in the clothes he wore or the way he styled his hair? Would his father just look over at him one day and _know_?

The routine of standing, kneeling, singing, crossing himself, sitting, and on and on felt like both a blessing and a curse that morning. It made it easy to fit in without really trying too hard, just by moving and speaking in unison with everyone around him. But where it had seemed calming and pleasant in the past, it now felt painfully slow. Victor was so tired of going through these motions. He didn’t even know if he believed in any of it anymore, so why did he still have to suffer through this?

But _finally_ the service began to draw to a close. Victor was itching with the need to race out of those doors as soon as he possibly could, planning to hide out in the garden again while he waited for his parents to make their way outside. He could almost taste the relief he would get once he escaped, the sense of finally being able to relax after surviving another Sunday of pretending that he cared about any of it.

But before sending everyone on their way, Father Hurtado stood at the front of the room, below the altar, and began to make some announcements. Victor wanted to groan with impatience. The last thing he cared about was a change in the Bingo schedule or a fundraiser to repair the roof on the parish hall.

Victor was spacing out, his mind already on how nice it would be to finally leave, when Father Hurtado said, “There’s one more matter I’d like to address. Some of you may have heard about the issue related to the Catholic Charities adoption agency in Dallas. The agency was recently denied tax-payer funding because of its policy to only place children with traditional families, according to our Catholic beliefs. As you all know, the church defines a marriage as that between a man and a woman, and we believe that is the ideal family for a child to grow up in. We do not accept a homosexual partnership as a marriage in the eyes of God nor do we think that it is in the best interest of a child’s well-being to be exposed to a sinful lifestyle such as that of homosexuality. Although many in America have now come to see this lifestyle as normal, and of course I would encourage all of you to love your neighbors first and foremost, it doesn’t change the fact that homosexual behavior is a grave sin. A _mortal_ _sin_ , in fact, which can jeopardize one’s chance at salvation. For that reason, we must do what we can to protect the children under our care. Some members of the local diocese have rallied in support of the agency and are working hard to organize a lawsuit on the basis of a violation of religious freedom. If any of you are interested in joining this effort, feel free to speak with me or George Sanders about how you can help.”

It was just a simple announcement, it only took a few minutes for Father Hurtado to even say it, but it hit Victor like a sudden, crushing blow. He didn’t wait to find out if Father Hurtado would say anything more, didn’t care if he looked rude racing out ahead of everyone, he just had to get out of there immediately. He squeezed past Isabel into the aisle, ignoring the concerned glance she sent him and the suspicious one he got from Pilar further down the pew, and rushed quickly by all the curious faces and out of the church.

Sometime later he found himself on the stone bench in the back of the garden, the same one he’d shared with Feña, his hands gripping the rough edge underneath his legs as if doing so would tether him to reality. His breaths were gradually getting slower and longer, clearing away some of the haze of panic, but as he came down from the attack, the swarm of emotions that he’d been trying to run away from hit him all at once.

It hurt so much. Tears stung his eyes, overflowing and burning hot trails down his face. He rubbed them away shakily. He didn’t get why this hurt so badly. It wasn’t like this was the first time Father Hurtado had talked about homosexuality being some big terrible sin. Back when same-sex marriage had been legalized, when Victor was about ten years old and too young to understand why the topic made him feel nervous, Father Hurtado had spent a full month giving homilies only related to traditional families and marriage, and the topic had continued to come up off and on over the years.

Victor wasn’t even one hundred percent certain that God existed, or that if he did, he was the all-knowing, strict, father-figure God that Victor had grown up being taught to believe in. So if Victor was full of doubts about the whole issue of God and religion, then why did Father Hurtado’s words keep echoing in his mind?

 _“..._ _homosexua_ l _behavior_ _is a grave sin. A_ _**mortal sin** _ _…”_

 _“_ _W_ _e must do what we can to protect the children under our care…”_

 _That_ was it. That was why this hurt him so much that he felt like he never wanted to step foot inside of Sacred Heart ever again, or look Father Hurtado in the eyes knowing that he’d been the one to say it. It was the same reason that he’d hated hearing his father use that word, “inappropriate”, the other night. Armando and Father Hurtado were trying to protect children, like the ones in the adoption agency and Victor’s own little brother, from _him_. _From people like Victor_.

The realization was so awful he was sure for a moment that he was going to throw up, right there on the gravel pathway next to the roses, the Virgin Mary looking on. He stared up at her pale face and tried to reign in his nausea. The statue was tall and perfectly white, not even a hint of dirt or water damage marring the smooth stone. Someone must come out to clean her regularly, Victor thought, to keep her looking so pure.

Victor was still technically a child himself for the next two years, but he wasn’t sure that would really matter if the truth about him got out. Armando hadn’t even wanted Adrian to watch Queer Eye; how would he ever be able to tolerate Adrian living with Victor if he knew what Victor was? No matter that Victor loved Adrian a crazy amount, loved reading him bedtime stories and playing with him and teaching him how to ride the horses. Loved Adrian’s obsession with Disney movies and weird little habits, like insisting on warming up his pajamas with the hair dryer or eating Lucky Charms one category of marshmallow at a time, starting with his least favorite shapes and finishing with the best ones. In the past whenever Isabel was busy with piano lessons and Armando was working late, and Pilar was too occupied with her friends and boyfriend, it had always been Victor that stepped up and took care of Adrian. And yet, here was Armando unknowingly deciding that people like Victor weren’t “appropriate” for Adrian to be around. Here was Father Hurtado claiming that people like Victor were somehow a danger that children needed to be protected from.

How would he ever be able to come back here again? To sit through another Sunday mass like nothing had happened? To walk right up to the altar alongside his parents and Pilar, look Father Hurtado in the face, and accept communion from him?

Something had broken that day. Some lingering sense of home and community that Victor had associated with Sacred Heart, the church he’d been going to for as long as he could remember. It had broken so completely that he didn’t think it could ever be repaired.

There was about a week and a half left until Christmas and everyone at Brasstown was putting in extra hours to meet the surge in college students that packed the cafe everyday studying for final exams. Victor barely had time to get his own homework done in between working, basketball practice, and babysitting Adrian on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He did as much as he could at the counter in between orders, but there was such a steady flow of customers that he rarely got much done. Luckily he ended up with Wednesday evening free, so he was planning to stay home and finish some assignments that were due soon.

Around five o’clock, after he’d gotten some of his homework and chores finished, he got a text from Benji.

 _Hey, I noticed that you’re not scheduled to work tonight either. Wanna come over and study with me? I’m trying to review for the Chemistry test_ _right now and I wouldn’t mind a little help from my favorite science nerd_ _🙂_

Studying with Benji sounded a lot more fun than hanging out at home where he kept getting distracted by Adrian, who wanted to play with him, and Isabel, who was in the middle of an intense cleaning spree that involved a lot of vacuuming and banging around in the bathroom next to Victor’s room. So he grabbed his stuff, told his mom he was headed to Felix’s house, and pretty much raced right out the door before she could ask any questions.

“Hey,” Benji said as he let Victor into the house. As soon as the door was closed Benji leaned up and pressed a lingering kiss to Victor’s mouth. Victor was torn between automatically wanting to kiss him back and wanting to make sure they were alone.

He pulled back a bit and asked, “Where are your parents? They’re not home right now?”

Benji smiled. “Nope, they’re out at some dinner at my dad’s coworker’s house tonight.”

That was all the reassurance Victor needed to press Benji back against the door and kiss him thoroughly, getting completely distracted from whatever else he’d come over there for. Benji’s hand moved to the back of Victor’s head, his fingers running through the short hair there in a way Victor was truly coming to love, and without really thinking about it, Victor let his mouth move in a trail of kisses along Benji’s jaw and down the curve of his neck.

Groaning, Benji pushed Victor back a few minutes later, looking flushed and breathless in a way that was really not helping Victor clear his head. “I kind of hate myself for saying this, but you really have to stop, or we’re not going to get any actual studying done. And then I will fail all my exams, and my parents will probably ground me, and you won’t see me again until next year.”

“I am definitely not okay with that,” Victor agreed, and took a step back to catch his breath. “I don’t care if next year is only, like, three weeks away, that is way too long to go without seeing you.”

“You’re going to have to stop saying stuff like that, too, that’s really not helping me stop kissing you.”

Victor had to bite his lower lip to stop himself from smiling too broadly.

They ended up sitting out in the living room on the couch, their notes and textbooks spread out across the cushions between them like a kind of No Distractions Barrier. Benji made them some tea like his mom had made, strong and with just a bit of milk, and there were more of the crunchy little cookies Amelia called biscuits. They spent about a couple of hours working very productively, and then took a break to eat some leftover pasta for dinner, and finally decided that they were about as ready as they could be for the test on Friday.

“So..” Benji said, after he’d finished telling Victor a story about his latest band practice which had involved an amplifier gone haywire, a noise complaint, and a visit from the local police. Victor was very excited about seeing them rehearse sometime soon, but maybe he’d wait until after they’d figured out some of their sound issues. “That was basically my Tuesday night. How’s your week been so far? Any news yet about your dad’s job hunt?”

Victor couldn’t help feeling a little stab of anxiety at the question. He’d been avoiding talking about it, or even thinking about it, out of some superstitious fear that it would all go wrong the second he relaxed and started to feel too optimistic.

“It’s been going pretty good so far, I think,” he answered carefully. “He said he got a call back from one of the interviews he went to last week, which is good, but…”

“But it’s still not a sure thing. I get it,” Benji said, with a little sigh. “I just wish we could know what would happen, one way or the other. Actually no, screw that, I wish that he finds a good job in Brandon as soon as possible so you can stay here with me forever. Or at least until we have to figure out college. But one thing at a time, right?”

“Yeah. I’m really wishing for that, too,” Victor agreed. He thought about how good it would feel to just know that the threat of moving was finally off the table, so he could relax and really let himself be completely in this thing with Benji. So he could call Benji his boyfriend. So they could be together for real, for as long as they wanted to be.

After eating they went to Benji’s room where they laid down next to each other on the bed and watched a TV show on Benji’s laptop. It was some drama series based on a book that Benji had told him about, but fifteen minutes into the episode Victor still had no clue what was happening, because he couldn’t stop focusing on Benji’s warm body stretched out next to his. They were so close already, Benji’s head on Victor’s arm, pressed together in a long line from shoulder to ankle, and it was easy to just brush his lips against the side of Benji’s face in a soft kiss, and then another along the rim of his ear, and then the warm skin just behind it. Suddenly, Benji was rolling over to meet him and the next thing Victor knew the laptop had been banished to the floor and they were full on making out, Benji a wonderful weight on top of him.

Victor’s hand found the edge of Benji’s t-shirt and slipped inside, running over the dip of his spine. He instinctively tightened his hold when Benji tried to pull away, making Benji laugh. “Just a sec,” Benji said, and Victor let him sit up, his mouth dropping open a little when Benji reached down to yank his shirt over his head and toss it away. Benji topless and sitting in his lap was basically the sexiest thing that had ever happened to Victor in his entire life. At least until a minute later when Benji tugged on Victor’s shirt, so he removed his, too, far too lost in the moment to feel self-conscious about it, and then Benji was lying on top of him again and kissing him.

Some small, distant part of Victor realized that he should probably start feeling nervous now and wondering how far they planned on taking this, but that part was almost completely drowned out by how unbelievably amazing it all felt. Benji’s skin was so good pressed against his, and he was kissing Victor’s neck, finding all these sensitive spots that Victor hadn’t even known he’d had before Benji had discovered them during their increasingly frequent make out sessions. It never failed to make Victor feel like he was a shivery, melty, weak-in-the-knees mess in Benji’s arms.

Victor didn’t even realize at first that he was rocking his hips slightly, and he might have been embarrassed about it but Benji was doing it, too, and they were both very obviously turned on. But Benji was kissing one of those spots on his neck, just under his jaw, and Victor was way too lost in how good it felt to worry about being shy.

Except then Benji leaned up and bit down on Victor’s earlobe, his breath huffing across the shell of Victor’s ear, sending a shiver down the entire length of Victor’s spine, and Benji rolled his hips down at the exact same moment, and that was it. Victor was gasping, clutching Benji’s shoulders hard as his back arched, and then he went completely still underneath him.

“Oh,” Benji said, looking down at him in surprise. “Did you just-”

Victor scrambled to get out from underneath Benji, his entire face, neck, and even chest feeling molten hot with the intensity of blushing so hard, and raced away to the bathroom next to Benji’s room. His hand fumbled with the lock, shaking so much it was difficult to turn it, and as soon as he managed it he slumped back against the door, his heart pounding hard enough to hurt. For a few seconds he felt like he was either about to pass out or throw up, and braced himself for one of those possibilities, but instead he just felt a wave of – _something_ – wash over him. Whatever it was, the emotion was dark and bitter and awful, thick in his throat to the point of nearly choking him.

In his head he heard those words again from last Sunday. _A grave sin. A mortal sin._

He didn’t even believe that, not really. He was almost positive he didn’t believe anymore in Heaven or Hell or some God up in the sky that had created gay people but also hated them for some inexplicable reason. So why was he feeling like this? Why couldn’t he get Father Hurtado’s words out of his head?

That feeling that was filling him up inside like poison… it was shame, wasn’t it? It was a shame so strong it had taken what had been something wonderful, getting closer with Benji than he’d ever been with anyone before, and ruined it. It made him feel sick to his stomach, made him want to rip his dirty clothes off and try to scrub himself clean in the shower. He couldn’t even look at his lower half, which felt damp and sticky; didn’t want to see the stain that was probably visible on his jeans.

“Victor,” Benji’s voice said through the door. “Can I come in please? I’m really worried about you.”

“Just- just a minute,” Victor said. God, he was such a disaster. This was probably one of the most humiliating moments of his entire life. They hadn’t really talked about it much, but Victor knew that Benji was more experienced than he was when it came to sex, both with girls and boys. He probably thought Victor was being completely pathetic right now, coming in his pants just from kissing like the total virgin that he was. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, Victor had to go and freak out about it as well.

Victor made a desperate attempt at cleaning himself off with a damp tissue but it didn’t really work, so finally he just had to open the door anyway. Benji took one look at him and immediately pulled him into a hug. Victor tried to resist at first, feeling like he was too dirty and Benji shouldn’t be touching him just then, but Benji only held on a little tighter, the embrace gentle but firm.

“Whatever’s going on in your head right now,” Benji whispered, “just tell it to stop, okay? You don’t need to be embarrassed or ashamed or whatever it is that you’re feeling. I like you so much, Victor. Honestly, until you got freaked out and disappeared into the bathroom, I was really, really enjoying that. And the fact that you obviously enjoyed it, too, was really hot. I love that you get so turned on by me. I love making you feel good. So please, _please_ tell those voices in your head that are making you hate yourself to just shut up for a minute?”

Victor huffed out a broken laugh that sounded more like a sob, and buried his face into the skin of Benji’s bare shoulder. He stood there for awhile just letting Benji hold him while he slowly began to calm down. When Victor’s breathing had evened out at last, Benji pulled away just enough to look at him.

“Are you feeling any better now?”

He wasn’t panicking anymore, so he guessed that counted. The self-disgust and embarrassment hadn’t really lessened much, though. He didn’t know what to say in response so he just nodded.

“Okay. Do you… uh, you can borrow some of my clothes, if you wanna take a quick shower. If that would make you feel more comfortable.”

The idea of sitting around, trying to talk about all of this while he was still wearing stained jeans was pretty horrifying. He nodded again. “Yeah. I think that’s a good idea.”

Benji handed him a towel and then found him some clothes. “Here, hopefully these pants won’t be too ridiculously short on you,” he said, handing Victor his own t-shirt stacked on top of a pair of Benji’s dark sweatpants and some briefs. Victor felt his face heating up all over again.

“Thanks,” he muttered, and was grateful when Benji left him alone to shower without saying anything else.

When he got out of the bathroom wearing Benji’s borrowed clothes he found himself feeling nearly as humiliated as he had before, just slightly cleaner. Benji met him in the doorway to his bedroom, taking Victor by the hand and leading him over to the bed, where they sat down beside each other leaning back shoulder to shoulder against the headrest.

“How do you always know the right thing to say?” Victor asked, half-jokingly and half-not, thinking about how Benji had somehow just known exactly what was going through Victor’s mind when he’d come out of the bathroom earlier. It was like Benji could read his mind sometimes.

Benji snorted. “Oh, believe me, I do not. I’m just good at guessing what you’re freaking out about because it’s similar to what used to make _me_ freak out.”

Although Victor had seen Benji during some vulnerable moments, like when he’d gotten drunk at Mia’s party or right after he’d been hit by Tom Davis at Homecoming, it was still difficult to believe that cool, collected Benji had ever freaked out about something sexual the way Victor currently was.

“I’m having a hard time imagining you ever being this pathetic…”

“Hey. Don’t do that,” Benji said firmly. Victor looked away, too embarrassed to meet Benji’s gaze, so Benji grabbed hold of his hand and squeezed it. “I’m serious. Don’t put yourself down like that.”

“It’s just.. everything about this is so embarrassing.”

Benji rolled his eyes. “Okay, first of all, you’re obviously not the only teenage boy that that has happened to. It’s really not a big deal, and like I said earlier, I _liked_ it. I liked making you feel good like that. And secondly, I do get that this is complicated. I mean, I’m the only guy that you’ve done anything with, right?”

“Yeah,” Victor said quietly, a little reluctant to remind Benji of just how inexperienced he was.

“Well, I think there’s a lot of baggage attached to sex. Like, stuff that society teaches you to think or feel or do, and whether you like it or not, all of that can really get in your head. It happened to me, too. Feeling really weird after being with a guy for the first time.”

Victor couldn’t help feeling surprised by this. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. The only other guy I’ve been with was my ex, Derek. When we started getting more… physical, I was totally fine at the beginning. It was fun and I liked it and it was _way_ better than my attempts at being with girls. But then the first time we went all the way, I felt so weird afterward. Even though it was a good experience, I just felt so… embarrassed, I guess. Ashamed. I don’t know. It was like it was _too gay_ or something. Like there was some invisible line in the sand that you couldn’t come back from once you’d crossed it, and I hadn’t realized that sex was that line until I was on the other side. Suddenly I felt really ashamed of how much I’d liked it, of how clearly gay that made me, even though I had thought that I was okay with being gay at that point. The worst part was that Derek didn’t get it at all. He grew up in pretty much the most liberal family imaginable – his dad works for the ACLU and his mom teaches Women’s Studies – so he didn’t really understand what I was feeling and we ended up having a big fight about it. But eventually he helped me realize that all of that shame and embarrassment was internalized homophobia.”

“What does that mean?” Victor asked. “Like, being homophobic to yourself?”

“Basically. It’s all the little voices in your head that tell you it’s not okay to be yourself, that you should try to hide or change who you are in order to fit in.”

“Oh. Yeah. I’m pretty familiar with those voices.”

Benji let out a small laugh. “Well, you’re not the only one. But the thing is, you can learn how to ignore those voices. How to tell them to shut up and go away. It’s not easy at first and I think it takes some practice, but it’s definitely possible.”

“How?” Victor asked a little desperately. He could still hear all of it in his head, loud and insistent: _inappropriate, a mortal sin,_ _w_ _e must do what we can to protect the children under our care,_ Tom Davis shouting the word faggot into Benji’s face, Jeremy asking “ _What, are you a queer now, too?_ ”, his father saying “ _j_ _ust as long as your little brother doesn’t really turn out_ _that way_ _. That’s the last thing this family needs._ ”

Victor swallowed hard. “I just want it all to go away.”

“I know,” Benji said, squeezing his hand again. “After my accident and everything, I went to therapy for awhile, and my therapist taught me some things to help me out with stuff like this. One thing you can try is listing some of the stuff that you love about yourself, like, to counter all of those negative voices that you’re hearing.”

“It’s pretty hard to think of anything right now.”

“All the more reason why you should try it.”

Victor took a deep breath to help himself focus, and tried to wade through all the hateful words and slurs that were flooding his mind, to find something positive in their midst. It was a lot harder than he would have expected.

“I… I’m good at doing funny voices to make my brother laugh when I read him bedtime stories,” Victor finally said, and Benji smiled, bright and proud. Victor continued, slow at first, but the words beginning to come more easily as he went on, “I’m good at science and basketball. I’m a fast runner… I uh, was the second fastest in my class when we ran the mile in P.E. last month. I make pretty awesome banana pancakes and I’m good with the horses…”

“You’re among the top three baristas at Brasstown,” Benji added, when Victor paused for a bit, struggling to find something else to say. “I mean, neither of us have anything on Sarah, she is like a wizard with that espresso machine, but you’re definitely a fast learner.”

“I can still rock those Carly Rae dance moves,” Victor said, with a small grin.

Benji was grinning back at him. “You look amazing in even the cheesiest of second hand clothes, including ruffly powder blue suits, which is _really_ saying something.”

The ugly, stomach-turning shame from earlier was fading away with every statement, growing weaker and weaker as the warmth within him grew stronger. Not for the first time he felt so grateful for Benji, for having someone as patient and kind as he was. There was so much goodness in the way they were together, in the way Benji made him feel, that it was hard to accept that anyone could ever find something wrong with it.

“I’m getting better at knowing what to say to make you smile,” Victor said, and Benji shook his head at him.

“Nah, you’ve always been good at that. You’re a really excellent kisser, too. Just for the record.”

“Oh,” Victor said, quiet and pleased, maybe a little uncertain. “Am I really?”

“Hmm, actually, now that I think about it, I may need a little reminder. Just to be certain.”

Victor laughed and leaned in to give him one.

The next day Victor was studying in his room after dinner when he got a DM from Benji.

 _Hey Victor, I hope this isn’t weird, or makes you feel uncomfortable or anything, but I’ve been thinking a lot about this and I’m pretty sure it would help you. It turns out there is a free counseling service for young people in Brandon_ _at a clinic near the college_ _. They have one-on-one therapy available and also some group_ _session_ _s_ _for teens. The link to their website is down below._

_Going to therapy after I came out really helped me work through some of the stuff I was struggling with back then, and I think it’d be good for you, too, if you’re willing to give it a try. Honestly I’m kind of nervous about sending you this message. I’ve edited it like ten times already lol_

_I really hope you get that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with you, or something like that, I just care a lot about you. You told me before that you want to learn how to be okay with who you are, and I want to do whatever I can to help you get there. You don’t have to do it on your own._

_Love Benji_

Victor sat there staring at it for a long time, reading the message over and over again. He didn’t really know how he felt about it. There was a part of him that maybe _was_ wondering whether Benji thought there was something wrong with him. How many times had he witnessed Victor breaking down in front of him by this point? Getting freaked out by everything from his family drama to his sexuality to the incredibly embarrassing incident that had occurred when they were making out yesterday. Benji had made him feel better about it afterward, but honestly, Victor was still struggling with moments of intense shame whenever he thought about it. He kept trying to do what Benji had suggested and list the good things about himself, but it didn’t always work.

His eyes kept snagging on that last line. The “ _Love Benji_ ” at the end. It was the first time either of them had used that word and maybe Benji meant it as more of an affectionate sign off than an “I’m in love with you” kind of thing, but it was still making his heart do crazy somersaults every time he read it. Victor didn’t think he was ready yet for I-love-you’s, especially not when his future was still uncertain and they hadn’t even gotten around to using the word “boyfriend” with each other. Even so, he liked seeing that word there, at the end of the message. He liked the way it made him feel.

Maybe Benji was right. Maybe therapy would be helpful. Victor felt kind of terrified by the idea of walking into a clinic and telling some complete stranger all about his most private issues, things that he still found difficult to even say out loud. Still, he did want to learn to be okay with himself, to be a braver, stronger person, and maybe it was worth at least thinking about trying this.

He couldn’t focus on studying anymore, so he went out to the barn where he would have the most privacy and sent Simon a text.

_Do you have time to talk now?_

Simon’s reply came about five minutes later, just as Victor had finished looking over Elsa’s hooves.

_Wanna try Facetime? Bram wants to say hi too_

Victor kind of wanted to talk about what had happened with him and Benji the day before and the message he’d just received, and wasn’t sure how he felt about doing that over video chat with Bram present, but he decided to call anyway. Maybe he wouldn’t mention the whole thing from yesterday after all, or his concerns about trying therapy. Maybe it would be easier to write about it instead of describing what had happened out loud. But just chatting with them would be fun, so he opened up Facetime and gave Simon a call.

“Hey, Victor!” Simon said, loud and cheerful, and Victor was immediately surprised by all the noise in the background. Simon looked just like he did in his Instagram photos, although maybe a little rosier cheeked than usual.

“Hi. Uh, are you at a party or something? Is this a bad time?”

“Oh, no, it’s cool! I mean, yeah, we’re having some friends over at our place tonight, but we can still talk. I figured it’d be a good chance for you to meet our crew!” He spun the camera around, revealing a group of about six or seven people in what seemed to be the living room of his apartment. There was a petite girl with short, dark hair in a yellow beanie, who gave him a smile as the camera sped by, and a taller girl with curly hair in a big, fuzzy pink sweater, and then a blond guy that gave Victor a little finger wave and who Victor was fairly certain was wearing make up. There were a few other people further away in the background, milling about talking and holding drinks, some of whom waved or shouted a greeting as Simon pointed the camera in their direction.

Just then Bram appeared, grinning and saying, “Victor! Welcome to the party. Wish you could join us over here for real.”

Before Victor could say much more than, “Thanks”, Bram seemed to have taken control of the phone and was introducing some of the people Victor had caught a glimpse of a moment ago. “So, these are our lovely roommates. Here we have Ivy-”

The dark haired girl smiled again. “Hey, there. Nice to meet you.”

“Yeah, you, too,” Victor replied, a little awkwardly.

“And this is Kim-”

“Hi, Victor! Just so you know, my pronouns are they/them.”

Victor didn’t really know what to say to that. He was aware that some people used different pronouns, but he’d never met a person like that before, and he was already pretty flustered by getting virtually thrown into a room full of people he’d never met. “Uh, nice to meet they?” he tried, and everyone kind of raised their brows at him and giggled uncomfortably, so he was guessing that was _not_ the correct thing to say.

“And over here we have-” Bram was suddenly cut off as the blond guy from earlier stole the phone away from him.

“Justin, with a soft “j”,” he said, pronouncing it like it was French. “He/him. Pleasure to meet you, Victor.”

“She/her!” Ivy called out, popping up behind Justin’s shoulder. “Sorry, forgot to mention that.”

Simon took the phone back, grinning at Victor, and Victor was beginning to realize that he seemed to be pretty tipsy. “Now you’ve met the whole crew! Isn’t that great? One of these days we’re going to have to kidnap you and bring you up here so you can meet everyone for real.”

He set the phone down somewhere, and then the five of them crowded around a sofa and somehow managed to all fit into the screen.

“So what’s your deal?” Ivy asked Victor, and they all stared at him expectantly. He had no idea how he was supposed to answer that. Were they waiting for him to tell them his pronouns? That he was gay? That he knew Simon because he’d been getting advice from him over Instagram DM’s and email for the last four months? Victor did what he usually did when he panicked and made something up.

“My deal? Uh… A friend gave me Simon’s email, ‘cause… um, I’m thinking about going to school out there,” he lied, and from the odd looks everyone was giving him and the frowns on Simon and Bram’s faces, he had a feeling it was pretty obvious. He couldn’t seem to stop himself from digging an even deeper hole, though, adding, “Yeah, I heard NYU had a really sweet basketball program.”

Ivy raised a brow. “You’ve been talking to _Simon_ about NYU’s sports program?”

“Ooh, your friend hooked you up with the wrong ass person, girl,” Justin quipped, shooting Simon an amused look.

Victor could feel his temper rising at the catty tone of Justin’s voice, and snapped, “I’m not a girl.”

“Ignore him, Victor, he’s harmless,” Kim said, trying to smooth everything over.

Victor felt about five seconds away from hanging up on all of them, this whole situation was just _that_ awkward. But then Bram jumped in and said, “So, Victor! We all just got back from Messy Boots. If you ever come out here to visit us, we absolutely have to take you to see it.”

“What’s that?”

“Only the best drag show in town,” Justin said. “They do this thing where they bring people from the audience on stage-”

Victor was getting that panicky feeling again and it must have showed on his face, because Simon said loudly, “Yes, and they have an amazing karaoke open mic after the show, and _someone_ -” he looked pointedly at Bram “-might have gotten me just drunk enough to think that singing in front of a bar full of people would be a good idea tonight.”

“It really took me back to high school,” Bram said, laughing, and he began to sing, “Why can’t I get just one screw-”

And then everyone joined in but Simon, who looked flushed and embarrassed, but in an oddly happy way. Victor sat there and listened to them all drunkenly singing together, complete with dramatic hand gestures and facial expressions, and he finally found himself laughing along and beginning to relax a little.

“Okay, we are totally having a karaoke night if you come to visit someday,” Kim insisted when the too loud, off-key singing finally came to an end.

“Do you think you ever would? Come visit?” Bram asked him.

“I don’t know. I mean, it’d be amazing, but New York is pretty far away from Texas.”

Bram and Simon’s roommates were intimidating, as was all the talk of drag shows and pronouns and stuff that Victor knew absolutely nothing about. But catching a tiny glimpse of their life in New York was definitely starting to make him feel curious to see more. For just a second, he let himself imagine a future like that: him and Benji maybe going to college somewhere together after high school, with their own place and a cool group of friends and not having to hide anything anymore.

It was both scary and wonderful to imagine.

The conversation transitioned into Ivy and Kim telling a story about how they’d met Simon during freshman year of college, something about Simon getting lost on campus trying to find the Queer Center and awkwardly asking around about it until he spotted the two of them, and as Ivy put it, “recognized his people”.

“You were wearing rainbow suspenders and a Tegan and Sara t-shirt,” Simon pointed out to Ivy, “it wasn’t exactly difficult.”

“Oh, Ivy,” Justin said, nudging her playfully, “you little hundred-footer, you.”

“You’re one to talk,” Ivy shot back, and everyone giggled. Victor had gotten a little lost, but found himself enjoying the banter anyway.

The more they chatted and shared funny stories, the less Victor was feeling intimidated by all of them, and the more he began to wish that he could just run away to New York and visit them. Pretty soon he’d been out in the barn for over an hour and his feet were so cold he couldn’t feel his toes, but he didn’t want the conversation to end.

The topic drifted around to the drag show yet again, and Victor couldn’t stop himself from asking, “Why do gay people like drag so much? Is it just about dressing up, being someone you’re not?”

Everyone went silent for a minute and Victor wondered if he’d just said something offensive. He wanted to backtrack and apologize, even though he didn’t really get what he’d done wrong, but then Justin spoke up.

“Look, Victor, I want to show you something.” He took his phone out of his pocket and held a photo up to the camera. It was Justin in a plain white shirt and black trousers, wearing a tie, not a hint of make up on his face, with a man and a woman on either side of him. “This was me a few years ago with my parents. They used to force me to put on this _lovely_ ensemble every weekend and go around trying to convert people to a religion that I didn’t even believe in. A religion that condemns people like me. _That_ was dressing up. That was… _drag_. But this-” he waved a hand at his face, sparkling with eye shadow and glitter, and the silky, floral print outfit he was wearing, “-this is just me, being me.”

Victor considered the strength it must have taken Justin to get to where he was and he couldn’t help but admire it. All week Victor had been plagued by Father Hurtado’s words; they popped up in his head when he was least expecting them, made his heart clench with pain and fear. He’d been trying so hard lately to be braver, to keep to the resolution he’d made to build a better life for himself. So, he swallowed down his anxiety and forced himself to meet Justin’s eyes; everyone’s eyes.

“My, uh… my parents are religious, too. Not like yours, but we go to church every Sunday. I really worry how they’ll react if I ever tell them that – that I’m like you.” Victor took a deep breath, made himself say it out loud, “That I’m gay.”

All five people on screen exchanged little looks of sympathy and pride, and Victor couldn’t believe that in the course of a single conversation he’d gone from finding them so scary to feeling like they were all so deeply connected.

“Oh, honey,” Kim said, and Bram said, “Victor, just know that if you were here, we’d all be wrapped up in one big, queer group hug right now.”

Victor laughed a bit and felt so much better, so proud of himself for having found the courage to tell all of them about himself. Another half an hour went by of talking and sharing stories with all of them while the New York group came and went with fresh drinks and got steadily tipsier. Victor almost felt like he was actually there with them, only the chill in the barn and the occasional sound of the horses moving around in their stalls reminding him of where he really was.

“Hey, uh, it’s getting late guys,” Victor finally said. “I should probably go now. But it was really cool meeting all of you.”

“Yes!” Kim agreed. “It was so lovely talking to you, Victor!”

“We will find a way to kidnap you one of these days,” Simon promised, with a drunken grin, one arm slung around Bram’s neck. “Absolutely,” Bram agreed.

“Let’s talk again soon, okay?” Justin said, and Victor nodded.

“Yeah, and next time, bring your boyfriend!” Ivy chimed in. “We’re all dying to meet this Benji kid.”

For just a second Victor didn’t realize there was anything strange about what she’d said. And then it occurred to him: he’d never mentioned Benji’s name to any of them that night. He’d never even said he had a boyfriend, since technically he and Benji weren’t exactly there yet.

“Wait, how do you know about Benji?” Victor asked slowly, and all five of them suddenly went completely quiet. Ivy began to bite her lip nervously, shooting apologetic looks at Simon. Victor felt his breath speed up with nerves and anger as he looked at Simon, at the person that he’d thought he could trust with his secrets. “Did you – did you share my messages with them?”

“Look, Victor-” Simon started to say, but Victor didn’t want to hear it.

“Seriously? Why would you do that?” He looked around at the rest of them. “So you guys only pretended not to know who I was. You’ve just been lying to me all night.”

The guilty looks on everyone’s faces were confirmation enough. Victor shook his head in disappointment.

“Victor, wait-” Simon said, but Victor was so done with the whole thing. He hit the end call button, and then turned his phone off for good measure. He couldn’t fucking believe Simon would do that to him. That he’d betray Victor like that. It was one thing for him to maybe talk about some of it with Bram; Bram was his boyfriend and probably deserved to know if Simon was talking to some other guy online. But to just share all of Victor’s most private fears and concerns and – and fuck – _everything_ he’d said about Benji, about Mia, about what had been going on with his family…

It was late and it was freezing cold out in the barn, and Victor had been looking forward to going back to his room where he could warm up and maybe listen to some music before going to bed. Instead he just slumped down on the floor, leaning back against the wall, and buried his face in his hands. He stayed like that for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little side note: It bugged me on the show that when Victor meets the NYC crew, the only person who mentioned their pronouns was Kim. Cis people should also get in the habit of sharing pronouns in order to normalize the practice, so that's why I included Justin and Ivy doing so. It's still something I'm trying to work on myself <3


	23. When I See Myself, I'm Seeing You Too

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: discussion of internalized homophobia and homophobia, brief mentions of violence and infidelity, frank discussion of sex/sexuality
> 
> The title of this chapter comes from the opening line of Brandi Carlile's "If There Was No You."

The next day was a Friday and Benji was working, so after basketball practice Victor went home and ended up hanging out with Felix. They set themselves up in the living room with video games and an array of unhealthy snacks spread out across the coffee table, which Isabel eyed distastefully and then reminded them not to spoil their appetites for dinner. It felt just like old times, like nothing had changed since elementary school, and it was exactly what Victor needed.

“Shouldn’t you be out with your new girlfriend tonight?” Victor asked Felix, mainly as a diversionary tactic. It wasn’t exactly hard to figure out the best way to distract Felix from all the short cuts and special items; all he had to do was mention Lake.

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe I’d rather be _here_ , with my very best friend in the whole world?” Felix asked, in a mock-offended tone.

Victor snorted. “Right. You’re saying you’d rather be hanging out with me on a Friday night playing Mario Kart than out on a date with the girl you’ve liked since seventh grade.”

“Dude, you know how I feel about Mario Kart. But uh… Lake might be hanging out with Mia tonight?”

“Ah, so that’s it. I knew there had to be some reason you were stuck with me when I’ve hardly seen you all week,” Victor said. He only meant it to be teasing, but then Felix started to look genuinely guilty, so he added, “But I’ve been a little distracted lately, too.”

Felix smirked at him, and glanced around. Pilar and Adrian were in their rooms, Isabel was making dinner out in the kitchen with some music playing loudly in the background, and Armando was busy with something outside. “So, uh, how’s that been going?” Felix asked, in a low voice.

Even though he doubted anyone would overhear them, Victor was nervous talking about it right there in the living room, and on top of that, he was still trying to figure out how he felt about what had happened at Benji’s house the other day and the message he’d gotten. He’d replied with a simple “Thank you, I’ll definitely think about it.” and hoped that Benji wouldn’t be able to figure out how uncomfortable he was feeling about the whole idea of therapy.

He definitely wasn’t going to get into all of that where anyone could just walk in on them, though, so all he said was, “It’s good.”

“Just ‘good’?”

Victor rolled his eyes. “Okay, it’s really good.” Despite everything he’d been worrying about the past couple of days, he couldn’t help thinking about how great it was being with Benji. A small, secretive smile spread across his face. “It’s really, _really_ good.”

Felix grinned. “That’s awesome. I’m so happy for you, man.”

Just then Pilar walked in and flopped down on the couch next to Felix. “Why are you so happy for him?”

A knot of anxiety formed in Victor’s chest, squeezing hard, and he found himself tensing up as he waited for Felix’s reply. Fortunately Felix didn’t even hesitate, just said casually, “’Cause he aced his Chemistry test today, like a total boss.”

“More like a total nerd,” Pilar corrected, and then reached over to steal the controller out of Victor’s hand right before the next race started.

“Hey!” Victor protested, but without any real annoyance. He settled back against the cushions, watching the two of them play, and helped himself to some of the snacks. A minute later his phone buzzed, and when he checked it, there was a new message from Simon.

He’d gotten a couple of messages since he’d just hung up on Simon and his friends the night before, but so far Victor had been ignoring them. The sting of betrayal when he thought about what Simon had done was still too raw for him to be ready to hear whatever Simon wanted to say. He swiped the notification away and was about to put his phone down when a new text from Benji showed up.

_How’s your Friday night going, V? Is it as rock and roll as mine?_

This was followed by a selfie of Benji in the locker room at Brasstown, his entire head and upper body covered in what appeared to be silver and gold glitter. Victor had to press a hand to his mouth to stop himself from laughing out loud, mostly at the grumpy look on Benji’s face.

_That depends. Do you think an evening of Mario Kart and Pop Tarts could ever qualify as rock and roll?_

_And what exactly happened to you? Did you get attacked by a bunch of preschoolers? Did you let a preteen put make up on you? Did you try to hug one of the cheerleaders before a pep rally?_

“Ha! Eat my dust, Luigi,” Pilar crowed as she sped past Felix across the finish line.

“You are such a cheat,” Felix complained. “You totally bumped my elbow just as I was getting to that really tricky part with the bridge. I demand a rematch.”

“Please, like I need to cheat to beat you at this game. Or any game. All right, bring it on, it’s your funeral.”

Victor was halfway through a S’mores Pop Tart when Benji’s next message arrived. It was making him a little nervous to be texting Benji with Pilar nearby, after what had happened on Thanksgiving, but she seemed so preoccupied by the game that he figured he was safe for now. He kept a tight grip on his phone, anyway, just in case. If she tried to steal it again he was going to kill her.

_Not a fan of pop tarts, but Mario Kart definitely qualifies_

_Those are all excellent guesses, but no. Sarah was making me hang up this snow globe thing above the display case and the bottom cracked when I was standing right underneath it. Pretty sure I’ve never looked gayer_

A laugh escaped before Victor could hold it back that time, and Pilar glanced over at him curiously.

“Texting someone?” she asked lightly, and Victor’s jaw clenched. He glared at her.

“Yeah, so?”

“Nothing. Just wondering who it was,” she said with a shrug, her attention back on the game again.

Victor didn’t bother telling her, since it was none of her business and she should really know that by now. He waited to see if she would say anything else, maybe make some threatening comment about figuring out who B was, but all she did was stay focused on the game, hitting Felix with a turtle shell and then mocking him when he crashed spectacularly. Victor ignored his sister and sent Benji a reply.

_I’ve honestly never really understood the appeal of glitter. Guess I’m just not that kind of gay?_

He stared at the message on the screen for a long moment, considering what he’d just written. It was getting easier day by day to say it. Whether it was in his head, or in a text, or even spoken out loud, it was slowly beginning to fit. To feel normal. To feel like it was really him. Even if he couldn’t show that to everyone else just yet, these little moments of saying it and being okay felt so important.

Benji’s reply a few minutes later made Victor’s heart swell, like it was suddenly too big to be contained.

_Maybe not, but you’re definitely my kind of gay ❤️_

Isabel called them all to dinner a little while later. Now that things weren’t so tense between Isabel and Armando, Adrian was back to being his usual chatty self, telling everyone about his role in the Winter Play next week – he was going to be a Figgy Pudding, apparently, and Victor didn’t even actually know what that was – and how he had already finished memorizing his lines. From the sounds of it there were only three of them, but still, Victor was proud of him. Victor felt full of a floaty, happy warmth, maybe because of the text from Benji, maybe because of his little brother’s excitement about all things Christmas, or maybe just because for one evening it felt like their family was doing okay.

A moment later, Armando cleared his throat. “There’s something I’d like to tell all of you,” he said, and Victor thought, _This is it. I let myself get too happy, so this is going to be the thing that ruins all of it._ But to his surprise, Armando said, “I found a new job. It’s not exactly here in Brandon, it’s actually over in Southlake, but it’s only about a forty minute drive. I’ll be managing some apartment buildings over there and taking care of some of the maintenance work.”

“Seriously?” Pilar asked. “Like, it’s actually happening?”

“Yeah,” Armando said, a note of pride in his voice. “I start right after the holidays. I signed the contract already and everything.”

“Does this mean we don’t have to move?” Adrian asked.

“That’s right. We’re staying here.”

Victor hated to bring it up, but he just couldn’t let himself believe it was all going to work out so easily. “But – what about the arrest?”

He could tell that discussing that topic with Felix present was making his parents uncomfortable, but Victor didn’t really care. He had to know. He couldn’t stand the thought of living with the uncertainty for a minute longer than he had to.

Armando pushed past whatever irritation or discomfort he was feeling and said, “My new employer is actually a former colleague of Tio Nicolas. Nico helped set up the interview when I was, uh, staying with him. Since the job is in another town, I don’t think we need to worry too much about people finding out about anything, and even if they do, Nico said he’ll try and help smooth things over.”

All through this conversation, Victor couldn’t help noticing how silent Isabel was. She wasn’t even touching her food anymore, just lightly holding a fork in one hand and resting it against the edge of her plate. For a moment, it almost seemed like there were tears in her eyes, but then she blinked, and whatever glimmer Victor had seen there was gone.

“That’s great,” Victor said, but without as much enthusiasm as he would have imagined he’d feel. He was incredibly, unspeakably relieved that they were going to stay and he would get to be with his friends and family, with Benji, in the home he’d grown up in. It was impossible to describe just how relieved he was about all of that. But… but he couldn’t let go of the thought that the possibility of moving never should have existed in the first place.

Armando looked so pleased that he’d found a new job and saved the family, but it had been Armando’s fault that they’d ever been faced with moving at all. Victor couldn’t feel as happy about the news as he wanted to because he couldn’t let go of the resentment he felt toward Armando for putting them through all of this. Yes, Isabel had cheated, and she had betrayed her family in doing so, but the pain that that betrayal had caused could have been dealt with in words. Armando was the one who had chosen to turn to violence. To break another man’s bones. Which was already bad enough, but to even go as far as attacking your boss, when you knew the disastrous consequences that would lead to?

All this time Victor’s hurt and anger had felt mostly directed toward his mother, and he hadn’t realized until now just how much more anger there was inside of him because of what his father had done. He didn’t even want to be there at the table anymore, pretending to be happy about the good news. He didn’t want to hear Felix say, “Congratulations, Mr. Salazar” or listen to Adrian cheering, “Yay, we’re not moving! We’re gonna stay here forever!”

He pushed his chair back and walked away to his room, without even asking to be excused. No one stopped him or tried to come after him, until about fifteen minutes later when Felix came to find him.

“Are you all right?” Felix asked, stepping into the room and closing the door behind himself.

Victor had been lying on his bed, staring over at the copper sculpture Mia had made, tracing over the gleaming curves with his eyes. He’d hung it up near his window after his birthday, and even though sometimes he wanted to take it down, he’d never been able to stand the thought of hiding something so beautiful away in a box somewhere, the way he had to hide Benji’s illustration of him, tucked into the gold box in the back of his closet.

Felix settled in on the foot of the bed and Victor sat up, leaning back against his headboard.

“I don’t know,” he said, in response to Felix’s question. “I don’t think so.”

“I was kinda expecting you to be happier about not moving.”

“Trust me, I am very, very glad that we’re not moving. I just – I hate that I had to even worry about it in the first place. It’s been weeks since they told us we might have to leave. Weeks of being stressed out all the time and wondering if I was going to have to say goodbye to you, and all my friends here, and Benji. I feel like I’ve been stuck in limbo this whole time, not knowing what was going to happen to all of us.”

Felix’s eyes shone with sympathy. “Ah. Yeah, okay. That really sucks.”

“My dad seemed so proud of himself tonight for finding a new job, and I guess it just really pisses me off that he can be so happy about it. My mom has done nothing but apologize and work hard to try and make up for what she did, but most of the time he just acts like she’s the only one who did something wrong. He attacked his _boss_ , Felix. He’s the one that let himself get arrested and lose his job and nearly forced us all to move. And now he thinks he saved all of us with this new job? Even though he’s the one that put us in that situation in the first place, he still acts like he has to protect us- from moving, from not being able to pay our bills, from – from anything _inappropriate_ …”

 _From me_ , Victor thought, and something just snapped inside of him. Hot tears filled his eyes out of nowhere, racing down his cheeks and he could taste the salt when he opened his mouth to gasp for breath. His throat ached, constricting until it felt reed-thin, making it harder and harder to get air into his lungs.

Felix seemed too shocked at first by the sudden outburst to do anything more than stare, but then he quickly recovered and scooted over on the bed, putting an arm around Victor’s shoulders as Victor hunched over and tried to keep breathing through the sobs. Where had all of this come from? He’d had no idea there was so much anger and hurt inside him still, lurking just under the surface, waiting to come pouring out at the first crack in his defenses.

“I’m so scared,” he admitted, when he had breath enough to form the words. He had his knees pulled up, his face pressed against them, unable to look at Felix. “I don’t know how long I can keep hiding who I am from them, but I’m so scared that he’s going to make me leave when he finds out. That he won’t let me be around Adrian anymore. And it’s so fucking unfair. He can just nearly destroy all of us and disappear for a week, and yet we all welcome him back with open arms, and tell him how great it is when he gets a new job, and act like he wasn’t the one to fuck it all up in the first place. He gets to hurt all of us and still pretend that it’s people like – _like me_ that this family have to be protected from.”

Felix’s hand was rubbing circles against Victor’s back, slow and comforting, the way Isabel used to do when Victor woke up from a nightmare as a little kid.

“Victor,” Felix said slowly, sounding a bit shaken himself. “You don’t really think he’d do that, do you? Kick you out of the house?”

“I don’t know,” Victor mumbled, a painful, twisted mess of uncertainty taking up all the space inside of him. “I have no idea. Maybe he would.”

“It’s just… I mean, it’s kinda hard to believe he would ever do something like that,” Felix said. “This is the same guy that spent weeks trying to build you a treehouse just because you got obsessed with the Swiss Family Robinson when you were eight. The guy that’s gone to nearly as many of your basketball games as Isabel, and taught both of us how to drive, and got you a car for your birthday. He even painted himself green just because you and Pilar insisted everyone in your family had to be characters from _Shrek_ that one Halloween. I used to be so jealous of all of that, you know? I never even knew my dad, and yours would do practically anything for your family. I get that you’re really angry and scared right now, and you have every right to be, but… Victor, your dad loves you so much. I really don’t think he’d ever kick you out.”

Victor wanted to believe Felix, but he thought about the startling depth of rage he’d witnessed from his father in the past month – punching the wall at Tio Sebastian’s house on Thanksgiving, towering over all of them at the dining room table after Isabel had admitted to her affair that horrible day, explaining in that dead voice that he had broken another man’s jaw and nose. Victor felt like he hardly even knew his father anymore.

“He got arrested, Felix, for _assault_. And he’s made it clear a bunch of times that he’s not okay with one of us turning out queer.” Victor wiped his face and sat up straighter, drawing in a deep, ragged breath. He tilted his head back against the wall, stared up at the ceiling. How many restless nights had he laid here memorizing every crack and bump in its surface, full of confusion and fear, all because of the pressure his family placed on him to be the person they wanted him to be? “I’m so sick of lying to them and hiding who I am everyday. I hate it. I hate nodding and smiling every time they tease me about girls, or sneaking around to meet Benji where no one will see us together, or burying every part of myself that I know they won’t like. I’ve been hiding for so long and I just don’t know how much longer I can keep it up. All I want is to be able to tell them the truth. To just be myself. I don’t know if my mom will accept me or not, but she wouldn’t make me leave. But my dad… I feel like I don’t know what to expect from him anymore. His anger really scares me sometimes.”

Felix was quiet for a while, seeming to process what Victor had said. “I really don’t know what to say. I wish things didn’t have to be this hard for you. I wanna tell you that your family would never stop loving you or kick you out of the house or whatever, but I guess I don’t really know that for sure. Honestly, I really don’t think they would, but even if the worst case scenario happens, you’re not alone. You have me, okay? And you have Benji. And there are other people who care about you, too. It’s okay to ask for help if you need it.”

“Thanks, Felix,” Victor said, and they both sat there in a comfortable silence for awhile. The skin around Victor’s eyes felt puffy and his nose was stuffed up, his throat was still aching from crying so hard, and he felt like a total mess. Maybe Benji and Felix were right and all of the difficulties in Victor’s life were more than he should try to deal with on his own.

Felix had stayed for a while longer, distracting Victor and trying to cheer him up by talking about his plans for Lake’s Christmas present – he was apparently trying to make her some sort of complicated jewelry box in shop class that had a bunch of sliding, interlocking parts and Victor could not for the life of him figure out what it was actually supposed to look like. Eventually he went home, leaving Victor feeling a lot calmer than before, even if the anger and anxiety weren’t really entirely gone.

Victor was getting ready for bed when there was a knock on his door and then it swung open hardly a second later. He barely had time to pull up his pajama pants, and he glared over at his sister.

“Jeez, Pilar, could you just knock and then wait for a reply like a normal person?”

“Well, seeing as how we used to take baths together when we were little, it’s technically nothing I haven’t seen before.”

“Ugh. You are so disgusting.”

She wandered into his room, closing the door behind her, and Victor quickly threw on a t-shirt. He crossed his arms over his chest, watching her warily. “What do you want, anyway?”

“What, I can’t just come in to say hi? See how my _hermano_ is doing?”

He stared at her in exasperation. “You literally never do that.”

Pilar sighed, and leaned against the edge of his desk. “Okay. Look, I… I shouldn’t have been all up in your business the last couple of weeks. I guess I just had this theory that you and Mia broke up because you cheated on her with some other girl, even though you told me you didn’t do that. After Eric lying to me, and then _Mami_ lying to all of us, I just felt like there was no one left that I could trust. Especially since you’ve been acting so weird lately. But grabbing your phone like that and fighting with you the other day, that was pretty fucked up.”

“Yeah, it really was. Is this your idea of an apology? ‘Cause I’m still waiting to actually hear it.” Victor knew he was provoking her, but the anger he felt over the invasion of his privacy was still very raw, and he wasn’t going to be able to let go of it that easily.

Pilar pursed her lips, and looked like she was ready to give up on the whole thing and stomp off to her bedroom again, but to Victor’s surprise her annoyance was gone as quickly as it had come. There was a shockingly genuine expression of remorse on her face.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I promise to stay out of your business from now on.”

Victor blinked at her. “Oh. Okay. Thank you.”

She regarded him for a long moment, a strange look on her face, like she was trying to find something in Victor’s eyes. He shifted a little on his feet, wishing she would just look away. He had no idea what she was hoping to find.

“I know I don’t really deserve to hear about whatever’s going on with you, but if you do want to talk, I’m here,” she said finally. He couldn’t even remember the last time Pilar had spoken so gently to him.

He remembered what he’d told Felix earlier. “ _I’m so sick of lying to them and hiding who I am everyday._ ”

It was so tempting to just tell her, but when he opened his mouth, he couldn’t do it. He couldn’t get the words out. Telling her was too risky. There was a chance that telling her would lead to everyone else finding out and then everything he was most afraid of might actually happen.

So instead he just said, “Thanks, Pilar. I appreciate that, but… There’s really nothing to tell.”

Pilar nodded slowly, something sad and disappointed darkening her expression. “Okay,” she said, and opened the door. “Good night, Victor.”

After she left, Victor couldn’t help feeling like he’d let her down in some way.

Saturday morning Victor went to work at Brasstown and was surprised to see that Benji was working as well, despite the fact that Victor had been scheduled to open with Sarah.

“Her daughter got sick, so I’m filling in today,” Benji explained when Victor came to join him at the counter.

Victor smiled when he caught sight of Benji’s apron. “I think you’re still kind of sparkling a bit, just here,” he said, and reached out to try and brush some of the glitter off of Benji’s chest. Benji bit his lip, his gaze snagging on Victor’s, and Victor felt a spark of heat ignite in his belly. If they weren’t in the middle of the cafe, they’d definitely be kissing by now.

He hadn’t really seen much of Benji since Wednesday, when he’d gone over to Benji’s house and the humiliating make out incident had occurred. Victor had been a little worried that things would feel awkward between them when he did see Benji again, so it was a relief to realize that what had happened had done nothing to lessen the way they always seemed to be so drawn to each other.

Victor took a step back as a customer approached the counter, putting some much needed space between them, and from then on the morning flew by in a rush of orders. He sank down onto a bench in the break room when they finally clocked out around one o’clock and just leaned back against the wall for a minute with his eyes closed.

“You okay? You’re looking pretty wiped,” Benji said as he grabbed his stuff out of his locker.

“Yeah, just tired. It’s been a stressful couple of days.”

Benji frowned. “Did something happen?”

Victor didn’t really want to get into his complicated feelings about his father just then, and he absolutely did not want to talk about the Make Out Incident or Benji’s therapy suggestion, so instead he said, “I kind of had a falling out with Simon the other day.”

Benji sat down next to Victor on the bench, not quite touching him, but close enough that Victor could feel the warmth of his body. Victor really wanted to touch him, to hold his hand or kiss him, but the door to the back room was wide open and anybody could just walk by and see them.

He ended up explaining what had happened the other day and Benji listened sympathetically. “That really sucks,” Benji said. “I’m so sorry he betrayed your confidence like that, Victor. But… I don’t know, he seems like a really nice guy. I mean, he’s been helping you out for months now. Maybe you should at least hear him out?”

Victor sighed. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Benji gave him a little smile and touched Victor’s finger with his own where no one would see it. “Hey, what are you doing after this? I still haven’t finished my Christmas shopping, so I was thinking maybe we could do it together if you’re free?”

“Oh, yeah, that sounds great. I haven’t even started mine yet.”

They ended up driving all the way to a mall near Fort Worth because that was where Victor would be able to buy the toy he knew Adrian really wanted, and there were enough other stores there that they should be able to find most of what they needed in one trip.

“A Lego castle? From _Frozen_?” Benji said in surprise, when Victor finally located what he was looking for among the crowded aisles of the toy store. “Wow, your brother is, like, seriously obsessed with that movie.”

“You have no idea,” Victor said, shaking his head. “That’s just how Adrian is. He picks one thing and that’s all he cares about for like a year, until the next thing comes along. Before _Frozen_ it was _Moana_. And before that it was _Brave_. He’s, uh, really into the strong female leads, I guess.”

Benji grinned. “Nothing wrong with that.”

They fought their way over to the book aisle and Benji helped him pick out a couple, the two of them having way too much fun flipping through the pages of the children’s books and looking at the illustrations. Checking out from the toy store took forever, with long lines of stressed out parents and screaming children in between them and the registers, which seemed to be operated by some of the slowest people on the planet. When they finally escaped, the rest of the busy mall seemed peaceful by comparison.

They walked around for a bit, found something for Benji’s dad in a kitchen appliance store, and a nice scarf for Isabel at one of the kiosks. Benji insisted on holding the scarves up against Victor’s neck to figure out which color was best, much to Victor’s embarrassment and the amusement of the sales girl.

“Nope, too yellow,” Benji said, replacing one, and picking up another in purple. Victor squirmed a bit, his cheeks starting to feel hot, and he could tell that Benji was brushing the back of his hand against the skin of Victor’s neck on purpose, just to get him flustered. “I don’t know. I’m not really feeling it. Could I have that dark pink one?”

The girl handed it to him. It was so dark it was nearly red and embroidered with gold thread in a floral pattern, and he could definitely imagine his mother wearing it to church. Benji actually draped it over Victor’s shoulders this time, his fingers grazing Victor’s jaw as he smoothed it down.

“This is perfect. It really brings out the color in your eyes.”

Victor was blushing so hard now it was ridiculous. “You do realize that we’re shopping for my mom, right? Not me?”

“You guys have the same color eyes, don’t you? And the same complexion. So if it looks good on you, it should look good on her, too.”

“I thought you weren’t a fashion expert,” Victor said, thinking of Feña’s comment at lunch the first time Benji had joined them.

Benji took the scarf off of Victor and handed it to the girl, who started to box it up for them. “Oh, I’m definitely not. My idea of a cool outfit is pretty much jeans and an old t-shirt. I’m just getting to be an expert in what looks good on _you_.”

Victor didn’t even know what to say to that, considering that it was blatantly flirtatious and also Benji had basically just told him that he looked good in pink, a color that Victor had always secretly liked. When he and Pilar were little kids, Isabel had color coordinated all of their bedsheets and towels and stuff like that by getting blue everything for Victor and pink for Pilar. Pilar had naturally rebelled against this, stealing all of the blue stuff for herself, and Victor had always kind of liked it when he ended up with pink as a result. He’d realized pretty quickly that as a boy he couldn’t admit to liking it, though, and it had remained a guilty secret of his.

The girl finished packaging the scarf and told him the price, so Victor handed her his debit card, grateful for the distraction. As she was giving him the card back, she said, “Happy holidays! Y’all are the sweetest couple. Hope you enjoy the rest of the day!”

Victor gaped at her for a few seconds too long, so Benji took the bag and thanked her, pulling Victor away quickly before he could freak out any further.

“Are you okay?” Benji asked when they’d moved a safe distance away.

Victor’s heart was racing and his face still felt too hot, but as he looked around he began to realize that no one here cared. No one knew them. They were nearly an hour’s drive away from Brandon, in a crowded mall full of strangers, and no one had even looked twice at them when Benji was covering him with scarves and not so subtly flirting with him. His pulse started to slow down at last, and he nodded.

“Yeah. Sorry, I’m fine. I didn’t mean to freak out again.” Victor took a quick look around. They were in a quieter section of the mall now. No one was really paying any attention to them. He dug down deep into whatever reserves of courage he had, and then he reached out and laced their fingers together. Benji stared at him wide-eyed.

“Whoah,” Benji said.

“I know,” Victor agreed.

Victor’s heart rate had definitely picked up again. It felt like he was going to give himself a heart attack at this rate. But then Benji’s shock melted away into a truly stunning smile, and Victor’s heart started pounding for an entirely different reason.

“You’re pretty amazing, you know that?” Benji said, tightening his hold on Victor’s hand. Victor desperately wanted to kiss him, but public hand-holding was about all he could deal with at this point in his life.

They spent the next few hours doing the rest of their shopping, eating lunch in the noisy cafeteria, and Benji even treated him to a fancy Christmas themed peppermint mocha at Starbucks, with whipped cream and bits of crushed candy cane on top. It wasn’t as good as the mochas at Brasstown, to be fair, but that didn’t really matter. Victor only managed to hold hands with Benji off and on throughout the day for a few minutes at a time, getting nervous whenever he caught someone staring at them and dropping Benji’s hand, but no one ever said anything to them, and the fact that he’d been able to do it at all felt like an enormous step forward. Every time he did it, Benji would reward him with a broad smile and that made it all worth it.

Back in Brandon later that day, Victor stopped his truck in front of Benji’s house. “Hey, um, before you go, there’s something I wanted to tell you. So I just found out last night that my dad got a new job. He said he already signed the contract and he’s going to start right after the holidays.”

Benji’s face lit up, and then he pretty much lunged across the seat to wrap Victor up in a hug. “That’s amazing!” he exclaimed. “God, I can’t believe you waited all day to tell me that!”

Victor laughed, and tried not to think about all of the messy, complicated feelings he was still trying to sort through related to his father’s announcement the night before. The day with Benji had been so good; he wasn’t ready to let any of the bullshit in his life ruin it. “Sorry. I probably should have said something sooner. So, anyway, now that it seems like we’re definitely staying here… I uh, I was wondering if you wanted to make this thing with us more… official? I mean, we’d still have to keep it a secret for now, but definitely not _forever_ , and um…”

“Victor,” Benji said, pulling back enough to look him in the eyes. “Is that your way of asking me to be your boyfriend?”

“Yes?”

“Okay.” Benji said.

“Okay what? Okay you’ll be my, um, my boyfriend?”

“Yes,” Benji said, kissing him. “I’ll be your boyfriend.”

That night Victor went out to the barn again and finally gave Simon a call on Facetime. Simon answered right away.

“Victor, thank you so much for calling,” Simon said. “Look, I’m really sorry about what happened. I tried to explain in my messages, and I hope what I said made sense to you.”

Victor overturned a bucket near Beau’s stall and sat down on it. Beau kept nudging his shoulder with his nose, so Victor dug a slice of apple out of his pocket and held it out for him.

“I, uh, I actually didn’t read your messages yet. Sorry.” Victor knew he probably should have looked at them before calling, but he’d had such a good day with Benji and he didn’t really want to dwell on all of that negative stuff. He just wanted to get this conversation out of the way so he could decide if he and Simon were still friends. As upset as he was, he really didn’t want to lose Simon.

“Oh. Well, look, I was really nervous when I first started getting your messages. I know you think I’m this guru who always knows the right thing to say, but the truth is, I don’t. You were going through all of this stuff that I didn’t really get. Obviously I know what it’s like to be gay, but our experiences are really different, Victor. I never had a girlfriend, but Bram did. I never grew up in a rural area, or dealt with my parents fighting all the time, but Ivy and Kim did. And I don’t really know what it’s like to have a religious family, but Justin does. No one was laughing at you behind your back or anything – they were all in your corner, supporting you and cheering you on. We all just wanted to do our best for you.”

Victor was startled to realize he was getting a little choked up at the thought of all of them working together just to help him. “But why would you guys do all of that for a stranger?”

Simon shook his head, laughing a little. “Because you’re not a stranger, Victor. You’re one of us. You’re family.”

Victor had to turn the camera away for a second so that he could wipe some of the moisture from his eyes, and when he looked at the screen again Simon was there waiting for him, a warm smile spread across his face.

“So, how have you been this week?” Simon asked.

“Oh just the usual, family drama and crying into people’s arms and getting all freaked out around Benji again,” Victor said dryly. “Also my dad got a new job, so we’re not moving, and Benji is officially my boyfriend now. Finally.”

“Jesus. That is a lot. Well, it just so happens that I’m staying in tonight because I caught a cold yesterday, so I’m all yours. Tell me everything.”

And Victor did. He talked about finally being brave enough to hold hands with Benji in public, even if it was in another town where no one knew them, and Pilar promising to back off on her “B” investigation, and his father’s new job which meant they wouldn’t have to move. He even managed to explain, despite his utter mortification, what had happened at Benji’s house on Wednesday.

“Victor, this might be one of those situations where I’m not really the best person to help you,” Simon said carefully, after Victor had told him in halting words about the shame he’d felt after the thing with Benji and how he’d been unable to forget Father Hurtado’s words all week. “If you’re okay with it, maybe you could talk to Justin about this? I think he’s still home right now, he doesn’t usually head out this early on a Saturday.”

“’This early’? Isn’t it almost eleven over there?” Victor asked.

“Yeah, well, Justin always likes to be fashionably late, especially on a Saturday night.”

Victor didn’t think he could explain the whole thing all over again, and especially not to Justin who he barely knew, but maybe there were parts of it that he could talk to Justin about. So he said, “Yeah, okay. I’ll talk to him if he’s still there.”

It turned out Justin was home and willing to chat with Victor, and so Victor told him an abridged version of feeling so overcome with shame after making out with Benji that he’d nearly had a panic attack, and how it had been somehow connected in his mind to what had happened at church.

“Oh honey,” Justin said, when Victor finished. “I know exactly what you’re talking about because I’ve been there, too. That internalized homophobia can be real bitch sometimes, can’t it?”

“That’s what Benji said, that it was, uh, internalized homophobia. I didn’t really know what it was before. But he told me that I could learn to ignore it by trying to, like, think more positively I guess?”

“Well, yeah, I mean, I think that would help, but it’s a little more complicated than that. Look, are you seeing anyone? Like, a therapist or anything?”

Victor shook his head. “Benji suggested trying that, but no… I’m not.”

“Okay, then, that would be my first piece of advice, too. Your Benji sounds like a total sweetheart – and also _super_ cute, please send us some photos, I am _dying_ to know what he looks like – but he is _not_ a licensed therapist. Neither is Simon, and obviously neither am I. I didn’t get to be this out and proud and fabulous all on my own, you know, I had a lot of help from trained professionals to get over the years of trauma and baggage that my religious upbringing left me with.”

“All right, I’ll give it a try,” Victor said, and he really meant it. Maybe it wasn’t fair to dump all of his problems on the other people in his life, like Benji and Simon and Felix, and expect them to have all the answers. Maybe it was time for him to take some responsibility in dealing with some of those issues himself.

“Excellent,” Justin said, beaming at him. “I guess my second piece of advice is to, ah, spend a little time _alone_ with your sexuality before you jump into bed with this hot boyfriend of yours. If you can figure out what you like and learn how to feel good about it on your own, you just might be able to let go of some of those feelings of shame that you’re connecting with sex right now, and then when you are ready to move forward with Benji, it’ll be a much more positive, exciting experience for both of you.”

This was one of the most embarrassing pieces of advice Victor had received from someone he hardly knew, and yet he could tell that it was really _good_ advice, and despite how awkward he felt he was really grateful for Justin’s help.

“Thank you,” Victor managed to say, “Um. I’m going to try that. All of it.”

“Perfect,” Justin said, with a little wink. “I wish a wise, sophisticated, _wildly_ attractive older guy had told me some of that when I was your age. Would’ve saved me a whole lot of heartache. Oh, and remember to get tested often and use protection! You boys had better be safe or I swear I will fly down to Houston myself with a suitcase full of condoms and a _very_ stern lecture.”

“I actually live near Dallas,” Victor said, trying desperately to ignore the rest of what had just been said.

Justin shrugged. “Eh. Same thing.”

Alone in his room that night, Victor sat in bed with his laptop, the door locked just in case his sister or any other family member tried to pop in on him again, and opened up an incognito tab. He took a deep breath to try to gather some courage, and with slightly shaky hands he typed into Google “gay sex advice”. There were a lot of pretty weird results, but he waded past the stuff that was clearly more niche than he needed, and found some sites that were… very educational.

At first he could feel himself getting freaked out again, that sense of doing something shameful creeping over him like a cold sweat, and he felt hyper aware of every other sound in the house. Any time he thought he heard someone in the hallway, he’d tense up, ready to close the browser window and pretend he’d just been reading, but it was after midnight and everything remained quiet. He kept reminding himself that there was nothing wrong with him for wanting to know about this stuff, that there was nothing wrong with being gay, and whenever those nasty, hateful voices in his head got too loud he tried to just close his eyes and think about how natural and right it felt to be with Benji. He even stopped for awhile when it all got to be too much and ran through a list of things that he liked about himself in his head, like Benji had taught him to do.

Gradually he started to relax, and then he discovered that thinking about this stuff, imagining what it might feel like to try some of it eventually, was actually really exciting. And hot. He wasn’t sure when he’d be ready to do any of it with Benji, but he felt better knowing that he wasn’t as scared of it now or as ashamed. Instead, he was starting to look forward to it, to getting to share those experiences with someone he really cared about, and he wanted to make sure that when he did, those feelings of shame and self-disgust would be long gone.

So once he’d finished his research, and maybe took a much needed break to think about Benji and some of the new stuff he’d just learned, Victor eventually turned on the laptop again and followed the link that Benji had sent him the other day. It led him to the website for the clinic in Brandon and he scheduled an appointment for after the holidays. In his mind, he imagined tearing down that old, rotten structure his life had been one wall at a time, and building up something better and stronger in its place.


	24. Christmas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: homophobia
> 
> All right, here's another long roller-coaster of a chapter! I think the rest of the day will be busy for me, so I'm posting this a bit early. Enjoy :)

“Okay, there’s a pasta casserole in the fridge for dinner, just stick it in the oven for twenty minutes to heat it up, and don’t forget to make sure Adrian uses that new toothpaste when he brushes his teeth tonight.” Isabel paused in her directions to level a stern look at Adrian. “I don’t care if it tastes like that bubblegum medicine that you hate, it’s the one your dentist told me to buy, and you’re gonna use it, got it, _muchacho_?”

“ _E_ _se hombre odia a los niños,_ ” Adrian muttered darkly.

Isabel rolled her eyes and then leaned forward to give both Adrian and Victor kisses on the cheek. “Okay, bye, _mis amores_! We’ll be home around ten.”

Armando was already standing at the door in his coat, a look on his face that seemed to suggest he just wanted to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible. Their new marriage counselor had apparently prescribed a date night as a way to reconnect, so they were headed out to their Tuesday therapy session and then dinner afterward. Victor couldn’t really imagine anything more awkward than going straight from the therapist’s office to a date that that same therapist had forced you to go on, but he hoped that against all odds it actually went well for them.

The winter vacation had started, so Victor worked a morning shift at Brasstown, and then spent the rest of the day so far at home wrapping the Christmas presents that he’d bought last weekend and watching cartoons with his little brother. Pilar had left around lunchtime to go hang out with some of her friends. She’d actually kept to the promise she’d made last week and was staying out of Victor’s business, which was a relief, and more than that she was actually being friendlier with him than she’d been in a long time. He didn’t really know where all of this goodwill was coming from, maybe it was some kind of Christmas miracle, but he definitely appreciated it. He’d finally begun to relax a little at home, no longer constantly worried about his sister figuring out all of his secrets and outing him to everyone.

His parents hadn’t been gone for very long when he got a text message from Benji.

_Guess who just got off work early?_

Victor grinned and sent him a quick reply.

_I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess it’s you_

_How did you know?? The cafe is totally dead so Sarah is sending me home now. I guess all the college kids have already left town for the holidays?_

_So, what are you up to? Wanna hang out? My parents will be home soon but I don’t think they’ll mind if I have a “friend” over_

_By which I mean my secret boyfriend_ 😉

_I wish I could, but it’s Tuesday Therapy Day for my parents so I’m babysitting Adrian_

Victor had a brief moment of resentment that his little brother was preventing him from going over to see Benji, but then Adrian did a really cute little twirl with his Elsa wand and pretended to freeze the armchair, and Victor just couldn’t stay mad at him. He considered it for a second and realized that there was no reason _he_ couldn’t invite a friend over.

_Why don’t you come over here instead? My parents and Pilar are gonna be out until late, so it’d just be us and Adrian, and I swear he’s pretty cool for a little kid_

_Are you sure it won’t be weird if any of them come home early?_

_I’m sure. You’re not the only one who’s allowed to have a “friend” over, B. We can all hang out and watch cheesy Christmas movies together, it’ll be fun (if you’re into cheesy Christmas movies and hanging out with a seven year old all day…)_

_All right, you’ve convinced me. I’m gonna leave Brasstown now so I’ll be there in like 40 minutes_

_40????_

_Wait, are you walking over here? Don’t walk. Me and Adrian can come pick you up_

_That’s awesome, thank you!_

_See you in 10_

Victor tucked his phone away in his pocket and went to find Adrian, who was busy constructing some kind of monolithic Lego Skyscraper in the middle of his bedroom. Some of his Disney figures were posed on and around it in what seemed to be various scenes of distress, judging by the high-pitched, panicky voices Adrian was doing for them.

“Victor! Come help!” he shouted excitedly when he noticed Victor standing in his doorway. “Everybody’s stuck on the mountain and an avalanche is coming! Elsa and Ana have to save them. Here, you can be Hans.”

“Uh, maybe later?” Victor said, gently pushing the little Hans figure away. “I was actually thinking it might be fun if one of my friends came over today and hung out with us. Is that okay?”

Adrian frowned. “I don’t know. Can we still play avalanche rescue?”

Victor internally blanched at the thought of asking Benji to play with a bunch of dolls with him and his little brother, but it seemed like there was probably no getting out of it. “Um. Yeah, sure. And we could maybe even get a hot cocoa at the cafe.”

The promise of a sugary drink sealed the deal, and about ten minutes later they were pulling into the parking lot behind Brasstown. “So we’re picking up my friend Benji,” Victor explained to Adrian as they headed into the shop. “He was at my birthday party, remember?”

“Not really,” Adrian said.

“Well, he’s really nice, so I’m sure you’ll like him.” Victor held the door open for his brother and they walked inside. Benji was waiting for them at a table near the windows, and he stood up as he saw them come in.

“Hey guys.” He gave Adrian a little grin. “I almost didn’t recognize you without the antlers.”

“Oh yeah. I remember you,” Adrian said, staring up at Benji and squinting a little. “You gave me candy. And your hair was a lot longer last time.”

“I hate to break it to you, but that wasn’t actually my real hair.”

Adrian nodded. “My friend Ashley at school has a blond wig, too. One time I went to her house and we played Elsa and Ana and I got to wear it. It was really cool, but way too itchy.”

Benji was biting his lip in an effort to keep a straight face. “Yeah, my extensions were pretty itchy, too, and took a very long time to put in. It was really fun getting dressed up, though.”

Victor thought about how good Benji had looked in that Halloween costume and decided he really wouldn’t mind seeing Benji in those tight pants again.

“Uh,” Victor said, to distract himself from the direction his thoughts were headed in, “I kinda promised Adrian a cocoa in exchange for coming over here.”

“Nice. Maybe we should all get one?”

“Sure, why not?” Victor said. They ordered three cocoas from Sarah who looked like she was bored out of her mind in the near empty cafe, and so she even took the time to add sprinkles and marshmallows to the whipped cream on top, and then drizzled chocolate sauce over all of it. Victor glanced warily between the cup that was practically overflowing with sugar and his little brother, and realized he was going to have to very carefully monitor how much of it he let Adrian drink that evening if he didn’t want to be murdered in cold blood by his mother when she got home.

Back at the Salazar house, they hung out in the living room sipping their cocoas and watching some animated Christmas special on the Cartoon Network. Adrian was already starting to bounce around in his seat, so Victor was going to have to wrestle the drink away from him pretty soon, which he was not looking forward to. Even though it was the second time Benji had been inside Victor’s home, it still felt surreal seeing him there, sitting on the end of the sofa next to Victor. He couldn’t quite believe that Benji was really there.

He wondered what it would be like to have this all the time. To feel comfortable having Benji over whenever he wanted, and for his whole family to know who Benji was and what Benji meant to him. To invite him over for dinner some night and introduce Benji to his parents as his boyfriend.

Victor was still getting used to the idea of actually _having_ a boyfriend, even if it was a secret one that hardly anyone knew about. Even just a couple of months ago he probably would never have been able to imagine this happening, but despite all the challenges he’d faced along the way, he was so glad that it had. Looking back now on all that time he’d spent trying to force himself to be straight, to be with Mia, it was like it had all been the actions of some other person. There was nothing at all confusing anymore about the way he felt; it couldn’t be clearer that this person he was now, this person who was falling so hard for Benji, who could sometimes say the words “I’m gay” without tripping over them, who was working to become someone better than before… _this_ was the real him. He just wished he could show that to the rest of the world. To his family.

It was nearly dinner time and the sun was starting to set, so Victor said, “We should probably go feed the animals before it gets dark.”

This turned out to be the perfect excuse to part Adrian from his cocoa, which Victor strategically placed in the very top back corner of the fridge on the highest shelf, where hopefully it would not be discovered when they came back inside. As Victor and Adrian slipped into their coats and boots, Victor looked over at Benji and gestured toward an extra pair near the back door.

“You should probably borrow those ones, it’s pretty muddy out there.”

A few minutes later Adrian was showing Benji how to feed the chickens while Victor refilled the waterer. There was something wonderful about seeing Benji like this, up to his ankles in mud and trying to keep his balance in a pair of Armando’s old boots which were too big for him, nodding along as Adrian told him the names of all fifteen chickens as though he was ever going to remember all of them. Victor couldn’t manage to tear his eyes away from him. Benji looked so good here. Like he belonged in Victor’s space.

The horizon in Brandon was long and wide and flat, dotted here and there by other houses in the distance and the occasional large tree, so it felt like sometimes there was more sky here than earth, especially the way it looked now when it was infused with warm color, all orange and yellow and pink fading out into lavender and pale, grayish-blue. It was the same landscape Victor had seen his entire life, the same house and barn, same old oak tree standing tall over the corral, same fields rolling off into the distance, but it had never looked so beautiful before. There was something about seeing the way Benji was looking around at all of it, taking it in, something about the way his eyes met Victor’s, that made all of it feel new.

It began to really sink in then. They were staying here in Brandon, and Victor could have Benji now, for real, as his boyfriend, and whenever Victor was ready, he could bring this thing between them out into the open, where everyone could see it. For just a moment, Victor considered it, and didn’t feel overcome by fear at the idea. Benji looked over at Victor then and smiled at something Adrian had said, and he looked so perfect there, and Victor thought, _Maybe I could be ready soon._

When they went back inside, Adrian insisted on playing Avalanche Rescue and despite Victor’s best attempts to distract him away from it with alternative offers of cartoons and video games, there was no escaping it. So Victor and Benji ended up sitting on the floor of Adrian’s room with Disney figures in their hands, as Adrian bounced around making dramatic avalanche sound effects followed by pleas for help from the various characters scattered around the Lego mountain.

Benji was a little awkward at first, which was probably due to the fact that they were a couple of high school sophomores attempting to play with dolls with a seven year old, an inherently awkward activity, and also Victor was guessing that Benji didn’t spend a whole lot of time with little kids. But after a few minutes he relaxed into it, and then Benji’s flair for the dramatic started to come through, that same energy he had when he was on stage performing, or when he danced without any reservations. It was infectious, and soon Victor found himself getting into it, too, making funny voices like he did when he read Adrian bedtime stories.

“Help, help!” Adrian squealed, waving around a Jasmine doll that was meant to be clinging to a side of the Lego cliff.

“I’m on my way, Princess, just try to hold on a little longer!” Benji said in an attempt at a heroic voice, a little deeper than his usual register, which Victor found surprisingly hot. Benji mimed climbing up the mountain with the Kristoff figure Adrian had given him. “Man, where is that flying carpet when you need it?”

“Kristoff doesn’t have a flying carpet!” Adrian corrected him immediately.

Victor snorted. “Yeah, Benji, obviously.” He stretched out Hans’ little plastic hand towards Benji’s Kristoff doll. “Take my hand, I’ll help you up!”

The Hans doll assisted Kristoff up onto the ledge he was perched on.

“Why, hello there, Prince Charming,” Benji said, shooting Victor a look that was both amused and a little bit flirty. “We meet again.”

Victor stared back at him for a long moment, distracted from the game by the way Benji’s hair was falling around his eyes, the way he was biting his lower lip.

“Help!” Adrian called out again loudly, making them both jump.

Benji laughed. “Oh right, the princess. We’re coming, Jasmine!”

The game continued for about another fifteen minutes until Victor decided that they’d subjected Benji to enough playing with dolls for one evening. They all wandered out to the kitchen, Benji and Adrian sitting down at the dining room table while Victor put the casserole into the oven and went to work making a salad to go with it.

“Victor!” Adrian said suddenly. “ _Quiero hacer_ Christmas cookies! _Como estos!_ ”

He was holding up a cooking magazine with a bunch of sugar cookies on the cover. Victor sighed. “I don’t know, buddy, you already had a cocoa earlier, I don’t think you need cookies, too.”

“Please?” Adrian begged. “ _Podemos dárselos a Mami y Papi!_ ”

“Fine,” Victor said, unable to withstand the power of Adrian’s puppy dog eyes. “ _Pero tienes que ayudar a limpiar despues._ ”

“Yay!” Adrian cheered, jumping out of his chair and pulling on Benji’s hand. “Come help me find the cookie cutters!”

“You’re making cookies?”

Victor jumped and looked over to find Pilar standing in the entrance to the kitchen, her coat still over her arm. She was very surprised to find Benji there, her eyes wide, and Victor braced himself for whatever she would do next.

But to his shock she just said, “Oh, hey. It’s Benji, right?” and then went to put her coat over the back of a chair.

“Uh, yeah,” Benji said, glancing at Victor a little uncertainly. “Hey.”

“If you’re looking for the cookie cutters, they’re in that cupboard above the fridge, way in the back,” she said, taking a seat at the table. She eyed Benji critically and said, “Uh, maybe Victor could get them for you.”

Benji looked a little taken aback. “Did you just call me short?”

“Maybe?”

Victor was worried for a second that Benji would be offended, but instead Benji just laughed and said, “Well, you’re not exactly wrong. Victor, would you mind grabbing them for us so I don’t have to embarrass myself by climbing on top of a chair or something?”

Victor got the cookie cutters for them and finished the salad while Adrian and Benji pulled out the other stuff they needed to make the dough. Pilar even came over to help them after putting on some music – not her usual death metal or whatever gothic stuff she was into but some sort of non-mainstream pop – and the three of them managed to get the dough finished and put away in the fridge to chill by the time dinner was ready.

They all sat down at the table to eat. Victor couldn’t stop himself from shooting worried looks at his sister every few minutes, just waiting for her to say something cutting or suspicious or whatever, something that would ruin the evening. But she was surprisingly chill, talking to Benji about the music on her playlist, and never acting like there was anything out of the ordinary about Benji being over at their house.

Ever since she’d apologized to him the week before, she’d been like a different person. He didn’t get the sudden change in her behavior at all. It was really nice, though, all of them watching TV for a bit after dinner, and then returning to the kitchen to make the cookies. Pilar was being weirdly nice to everyone, and Adrian was sorting out which cookie cutters were the best, and Benji had some flour on the side of his nose that Victor found kind of charming and still hadn’t gotten around to telling him about.

“What is that supposed to be?” Pilar asked as they decorated the first batch of cookies later that evening. She was staring at a lumpy one that Benji was adding some black icing to.

“It’s for Adrian,” he said, “it’s that snowman from _Frozen_ that he likes.”

Adrian looked at it skeptically. “ _That’s_ Olaf?”

“Well, it was meant to be Olaf…”

The icing had smeared a little and looked more like a grimace than a smile, but Victor could kind of make out the face. He patted Benji’s shoulder sympathetically, careful to keep his touch as friendly and non-lingering as possible. “It’s the thought that counts. You’re such a good artist, how do you manage to draw so well and then, uh...”

“…And then completely suck at foam art and cookie decorating?” Benji finished for him, and Victor felt a little guilty but Benji just smiled. “Well, there’s a pretty big difference between pencil and paper versus foam. Or icing.”

“What do you like to draw?” Pilar asked him.

“I do portraits mostly,” Benji answered, carefully not looking in Victor’s direction. He pulled out his phone and held it up for her to see. “This is one I did of my mom last year for Mother’s Day.”

“Holy crap, that is amazing,” Pilar said. “I was about to say I used to like to draw, too, but I don’t think my attempts at sketching the horses when I was twelve can really compare to this.”

“Thanks,” Benji said, looking pleased, and Victor’s heart started doing these weird little flips inside his chest. Adrian clearly liked Benji, and now even Pilar seemed to approve of him, and it was making Victor feel all kinds of warm, proud emotions that felt too big to be contained.

Eventually one of Pilar’s friends wanted to Facetime so she disappeared into her room, and then it was Adrian’s bedtime, which he resisted far more than usual, but Victor won that fight in the end by agreeing to no less than three bedtime stories, one of which Adrian demanded that Benji read to him.

They finally turned out the light for Adrian and went to sit out in the living room. Victor had been tempted to take Benji to his room, but he didn’t think he’d be able to control himself if he did. His parents would be home soon and Pilar was around, and getting caught making out with Benji in his bed by one of his family members was really not how he wanted this day to end. They put on a British Christmas movie that Benji had recommended and ate some of the cookies, which definitely wasn’t as much fun as making out, but it was still pretty great. Victor knew he should probably take Benji home soon, that it might be better if he left before Victor’s parents got back, but there was no reason he couldn’t have a friend over and he was enjoying their time together too much to want it to end already.

A little after ten o’clock Armando and Isabel came home. They looked very startled to see Benji there, since Felix was pretty much the only friend that Victor ever brought home normally, but Isabel recovered first, saying, “Oh, hi, you’re Victor’s coworker from the cafe, right? The amazing Bowie impersonator?”

“This is Benji, _Mami_ ,” Victor said, trying to keep his tone neutral and not reveal how nervous he was feeling at that moment.

“Nice to see you again, Benji,” Isabel said, giving him a welcoming smile. Next to her Armando just nodded silently, turning away from them to put his coat in the closet. Isabel sniffed the air. “Ooh, did you boys make cookies? Something smells wonderful.”

“It was Adrian’s idea, we just helped,” Benji explained. “I hope you don’t mind that Victor invited me over tonight.”

Isabel wandered out to the kitchen and came back with a cookie a moment later. “Mmm, these are fantastic. You can come over and make cookies anytime you want.”

“Thanks,” Benji said, smiling brightly. Armando disappeared down the hallway without really saying anything, and Victor hoped that his father’s bad mood was just related to the therapy session or date that he’d gone on that day, and not because of Benji’s presence. Isabel was clearly making an effort to be cheerful around their guest, but Victor could sense some tension in her, too, a kind of underlying discomfort.

“Well, I should probably take Benji home,” Victor said, since it was getting late and the idea of hanging out with Benji now that his parents were back was not so appealing. Plus he and Benji might be able to enjoy a little alone time in the truck before the night was over.

Victor drove Benji back to his place, bringing with them a bag full of the Christmas cookies that Isabel insisted they take. They did end up finding a quiet spot in Benji’s neighborhood to park and make out for a bit before they said good night, and the day had been so perfect that Victor felt like he was pretty much floating the entire drive back to his own house.

He was in his room later messing around on his phone when there was a knock on his door and then Armando came in. He shut the door behind himself and leaned back against it, like he was too worn out by whatever had happened that day to stand up straighter. Victor’s floaty, almost giddy happiness transformed so rapidly into a cold knot of anxiety in his gut that he felt almost blindsided by it.

“Hey, Victor, I just needed to talk to you about something,” Armando said, in a careful, quiet tone of voice. He didn’t sound angry, which was good, but Victor couldn’t shake the feeling that he was in trouble for some reason. “About that boy that was here tonight-”

“Benji,” Victor supplied.

“Yeah. He’s the one you told me about before, on your birthday, right? The one you said was, uh, gay?”

Victor nodded, too nervous to speak.

“Okay. Look, I think you’re old enough now to make your own decisions, so I’m not going to tell you who can and can’t be friends with. If you wanna hang out with Benji at school or the cafe or whatever, that’s up to you.” Armando paused for a moment, shifting slightly on his feet like he was uncomfortable. “But I’d rather you didn’t invite him over here again.”

“What?” Victor’s heart thudded so loudly and violently, it was all he could hear in the quiet of his room. “Why not?”

Armando’s jaw tightened. “I just don’t think it’s a good idea for him to be around your little brother.”

Every bit of warmth, of happiness, that Victor had felt all day was gone, replaced now by an insistent, awful panic, mixed up with fury, that was racing through Victor’s body with each shuddering beat of his heart. For a second he couldn’t even speak, didn’t know what to say or think, and then to his shock he found the words just exploding out of him.

“ _That’s bullshit!_ ” Victor shouted, loud enough to make Armando jump back a bit in surprise. “That is so _fucking_ unfair. You don’t even know anything about Benji! How can you just decide that he’s not a good person for Adrian to be around when you’ve hardly ever spoken to him? You weren’t here today, you didn’t see how much fun Adrian had playing with him. Adrian _likes_ him. And – and I do, too. You can’t just pick and choose which of my friends are okay for me to bring over!”

Armando drew in a deep breath and seemed to hold it, like he was working hard to restrain himself. “Yes, I can,” he corrected. “I _can_ pick and choose because this is _my_ house, and what I say here goes. So when I tell you that I don’t want that boy coming over here again, you need to listen to me!”

“Get out of my room,” Victor bit out, low and terse, his whole body trembling with a rage and hurt so deep he could hardly stand it. He’d never said anything like that to his father before and Armando seemed to be too stunned to react to the words at first. Armando may not have realized it, but it wasn’t only Benji that he was rejecting just then. It was Victor, too. And the pain of that rejection was cutting him straight to the bone, to the very core of him. He felt like if he had to spend even another second in the same room as Armando, he was going to do something insane. “ _Get out!_ ”

“Victor!” Armando reprimanded, “you can’t speak to me that way-”

Victor jumped off his bed, where he’d been perched on the edge of the mattress, and stood there feeling like he was losing his mind. He didn’t know what he was going to do. Maybe shove his father out the door, maybe scream at him again, maybe run out of there and as far away from Armando as he could possibly get…

The door swung open and Isabel stood there, staring at the two of them in shock.

“What’s going on?” she asked. “Armando, what happened?”

“Nothing,” Armando said, “I just needed to talk to him about something-”

Victor couldn’t stand to be around them any longer. He stormed past both of them and raced down the hallway, snatching his car keys out of the basket by the front door, and was outside before anyone could stop him. He could hear the door swinging open again behind him, his father’s voice shouting, _“Victor! Victor, get back here!”_ but he ignored it, climbing into the truck and driving away from all of it. From all of them.

Victor woke up the next morning on the bench of his truck, cold and disoriented. He blinked up at the tan ceiling overhead, his eyes struggling to adjust to the bright morning light, and realized that his body was aching from shivering too hard. He sat up, his stiff legs protesting the movement, and started the engine so he could get the heat going.

He was in the parking lot of the reservoir that he and Felix had hung out at the day he’d come out to him. It had only been about a month since then, but it felt like a million years ago already. It was so early that the sun was only just starting to break away from the horizon, lighting up the surface of the water in reds and oranges intense enough to make it look like the whole, wide expanse of it had caught fire. Victor might have appreciated the beauty of it more if he didn’t feel like absolute shit at that moment.

It was the second time he’d spent the night in his truck since he’d gotten it and it was just as painful as the first time, physically and emotionally. Worse, probably, since it was colder now and he’d run out of the house without even grabbing his coat, so he was still shaking so hard all over that it hurt. The heat was blasting out as strong as he could get it, but it took a while for his limbs to thaw out, and then his hands were burning from the sudden change in temperature.

He’d driven around the dark country roads for hours the night before, restless with anger, and couldn’t even bring himself to seek out comfort from one of the people who might have given it to him, like Benji or Simon or Felix. He just needed to be alone with all of it for a while, all of the thoughts and fears and pain inside of him.

It was tempting to stay away from home for as long as possible, but Victor didn’t have his phone or wallet with him, he’d accidentally left them both in his room in his rush to get out of the house, so the only thing he could do was go back. At least it was still barely past six in the morning, so maybe he’d be able to slip in without anyone noticing and then he could either sneak out again or maybe just hide in his room.

The house was quiet when he got back so he thought everyone was still asleep, but a few minutes after he stepped into his bedroom he heard the door opening and closing behind him, and he turned around to find his mother standing there. Her eyes were red, her face lined with exhaustion. She looked just as bad as Victor felt.

“I didn’t think you’d be up so early,” Victor blurted out in surprise, a stupid thing to say, but Isabel just shook her head at him, one side of her mouth turning up in what might have been a smile if she didn’t look so sad.

“You think I was able to sleep at all after you ran out of here like that?”

Victor stared down at the floor, suddenly guilty for worrying her, despite the anger he’d been brimming over with since the night before. “ _Lo siento, Mami._ ”

“Where did you go last night?”

“Nowhere. I just parked somewhere and slept in my truck.”

“I was so scared,” Isabel said, her voice cracking on the words. She reached up hastily to brush away a tear, and even after everything they’d been through lately, even with how betrayed by her Victor felt because of what she’d done, she was still his mom, and Victor hated himself for making her cry. “I spent the entire night just imagining you dead in a ditch somewhere. You cannot even begin to imagine how scared I was for you. You can disagree with your father all you want, you can complain that his rules are unfair, but you can never just run out of here again in the middle of the night like that. Okay? _Me entiendes_?”

“ _Si, Mami,_ ” Victor whispered. He could feel himself on the brink of crying, too, and suddenly Isabel was wrapping him up in a hug so tight it left him a little breathless, and he found himself saying again, “ _Lo siento, lo siento..._ ”

She pulled away after a few minutes, wiping at her eyes again. “Your father and I will talk with you later about what happened, and what the consequences will be. But you’re not leaving this house again without our permission, got it?”

He nodded, and then she left him alone in his room. He was worn out in every way possible, so he kicked off his jeans and crawled into bed, burying his face in his pillow. All he wanted was to just go to sleep and forget about everything. To wake up in another life, maybe, one in which he didn’t end up hurting so much and so often.

When Victor woke up a few hours later, he took a shower and went out to get some food, since he couldn’t avoid his family forever and his stomach was rumbling noisily by that point. His parents were still at the table, and as promised they dealt out the terms of his punishment, telling him he was grounded for two weeks again and that he’d be taking on the majority of the chores during that time. He just shrugged and accepted this fate without any argument, too tired to even care.

Armando barely even looked at Victor as Isabel explained all of that to him, but finally, before Victor could turn around to leave, he caught Victor’s eye and said, “Listen. You shouting at me like that and running away, that was completely unacceptable. And just to be clear, what I said before, about inviting that boy over here-” Victor gritted his teeth at Armando referring to Benji yet again as “that boy” even though his father obviously knew Benji’s name by now, “-that still stands. And that’s final. Okay?”

Victor barely managed to keep his temper under control, his hands clenching into tight fists at his sides. He didn’t trust himself to speak without exploding all over again, so he just nodded.

Armando sighed. “ _Mijo_ , I admire your loyalty to your friends. I really do. But this is about looking out for Adrian, okay? I’m just trying to do what’s best for him. You can still see your friend outside of the house, if that’s what you want to do.”

“You’re wrong,” Victor said, low and quiet, almost whispering it. He was struggling so hard not to shout the words. “You’re wrong about this. About Benji.”

_About me._

His father’s expression darkened, and Victor was surprised by the way Isabel cut her eyes toward Armando suddenly, a strange look on her face. It almost seemed like she wanted to argue with Armando about it, too. But she said nothing, and neither did Armando, so Victor just turned on his heel and marched back to his room, shutting the door hard behind him.

He spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon just lying around in his bed. They hadn’t taken his phone away, so he spent a lot of that time messaging Simon and Benji. Felix had also buzzed in on the walke-talkie and Victor had talked with him for a bit, but he really wasn’t in the mood to speak to anyone out loud, so their conversation didn’t last long.

Around lunchtime he made himself a sandwich and then retreated to his room again, guiltily turning down a request to play from Adrian. He’d just finished eating when there was a quiet knock, and then Pilar let herself in, shutting the door behind her.

The last thing Victor wanted was to be around other people right then. He looked over at her apathetically from his spot on the bed and asked, “What’s up?”

Pilar pulled out his desk chair and sat down, which didn’t bode well for her leaving his room quickly. “I heard what you and dad were fighting about last night. It was kinda hard not to, with the way you guys were shouting. It was really fucked up of him to tell you not to invite Benji over here again.”

Victor didn’t know where she was going with this, and he really didn’t want to talk about it, so he nodded and hoped she’d take a hint and just leave.

“Where’d you go?”

He told her the same thing he’d said to Isabel earlier. “Nowhere. I just slept in my truck.”

She nodded, and seemed to hesitate for a long moment. Her voice was strangely nervous when she said, “So you didn’t go see B?”

Victor stared at her. He couldn’t believe she was bringing that up again, not now, not after the night he’d just had. “No,” he said shortly, and didn’t bother to elaborate.

Pilar licked her lips, her hands fidgeting with the hem of her frayed black t-shirt. “Victor, I know.”

It took a moment for what she’d just said to sink in. And then suddenly his heart was pounding hard enough to burst. “What?” he asked, his voice high and shaky. It was probably impossible for her to miss the note of panic in it.

She looked up, met his eyes steadily, and said again, “I know. I know about your secret. I know who B is.”

Everything, the walls, the floor, the ceiling, were closing in too tight and too fast. Victor struggled to stay present, to keep breathing. He couldn’t give in to the panic yet. She might be bluffing. She might have made a false assumption. She hadn’t really said anything yet to prove that she actually knew what she was talking about.

Pilar’s eyes widened in concern as she seemed to realize how close he was to losing it. She jumped out of the chair and rushed over to sit next to him on the bed, putting a careful hand on his shoulder.

“Oh, fuck, sorry,” she rushed to say, “I’m really screwing this up. Don’t freak out, Victor. It’s fine. I don’t care that you’re gay. You’re still my brother, and even though you’re kind of crazy and annoying sometimes, I love you. Okay? So would you please just take a deep breath before you, like, have a seizure or something?”

She wasn’t bluffing. _She knew_. She actually knew about him and she didn’t seem upset about it, and more than that she actually seemed to be completely fine with it. Victor forced himself to take Pilar’s advice and sucked in the deepest breath he could manage. He only felt marginally less freaked out, but it was a start.

“How-” he started to say, but his voice was still high with anxiety. He swallowed thickly. “How do you know? How _long_ have you known?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. The pieces all just kind of started to come together recently. It was obvious from what I saw in your texts that whoever B was it was someone you liked. Judging by all the winky faces and heart emojis.” She rolled her eyes. “I figured you had a new girlfriend and I was pissed at first, because your break up with Mia was so sudden and weird, and so I thought you cheated on her and that’s why I was acting like such a bitch for a while. And again, I’m very sorry about that. So, anyway, I found out there were no girls whose names started with B at your work, which made me think that you must have lied about that, but I couldn’t figure out who it might be at school, either. You really don’t hang out with that many girls. And then you freaked out after Father Hurtado said that thing about the adoption agency the other day, and that’s when it occurred to me. There weren’t any _girls_ at the cafe whose name started with B, but there was a _guy_ , and you’d told me before that Benji was gay, and that’s when I figured it out. All the weird stuff going on with you suddenly started to make sense.

“So I basically knew at that point, but then I went out to the barn the other night ‘cause it was my turn to feed the animals, and I heard you talking to some friends, and I heard you tell them. That you’re gay, and that you’ve been worried about how we’ll react. If we’ll accept you or not.” Pilar finally finished her story, and looked over at Victor a little uncertainly. “I swear I wasn’t trying to spy on you the other night. It actually was my turn to feed the horses. And by the way, I was planning to wait and not say anything until you were ready to tell me yourself, but then that thing with Dad happened last night, and I thought you could probably use a little support right now.”

“God.” Victor felt like his mind had just been completely blown. He had no idea how to react to all of that. He still couldn’t believe that any of this was actually happening. That she really knew. That she was apparently okay with it. He laughed, a little disbelievingly. “I feel like we’re in a detective novel right now. Like, that ending part where they explain how they cracked the case. Maybe you should become a private investigator or something.”

Pilar considered this. “I might be into getting a long, black trenchcoat. Absolutely no hats, though.”

Victor glanced at her quickly and away again. He felt scared to ask, even though it seemed pretty clear by now. “So you really don’t care?”

She shrugged again. “I mean, I care, ‘cause it’s, like, an important part of you or whatever, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. I’m serious, Victor. You’re a total weirdo, but I love you.”

Victor’s hands were shaking a little in his lap, and he let out a weird sound, half a cough and half a breath of relief, feeling close to falling apart even though everything was actually fine, and so Pilar rolled her eyes at him and pulled him into a hug. His sister wasn’t really one for physical contact, so the hug didn’t last for very long, but it didn’t matter. He felt so much better afterward, like he could finally breathe again.

“So… what are you going to do?” Pilar asked, a minute later. “Are you going to tell people?”

“I don’t know,” Victor admitted. “I want to, but… I’m still so worried about how Mom and Dad will react to it. Especially Dad.”

“Yeah,” Pilar said, nodding. “I don’t really blame you. I think _Mami_ might be okay, but I don’t know about him. Not after last night.”

“I think I’ll have to tell them eventually. It’s just that it hasn’t even been that long since I figured it out myself, you know? That’s the real reason why I broke up with Mia. Because I realized that I – that I’m gay, and I couldn’t be with her the way she wanted me to. I’m still trying to get used to knowing this about myself.”

“That makes sense. And things have been pretty shitty around here lately. It’s not like it was the best time for you to bring it up with them.”

“Yeah.”

“So...” Pilar said, and then she grinned. “B is Benji, huh? Is he your boyfriend?”

Victor nodded, a little shyly.

Pilar’s grin grew even wider. She arched a brow. “He’s pretty hot. I gotta say, you have excellent taste, _hermano_.”

“Oh my god,” Victor groaned. “Stop it. I am begging you.”

“What?” she said, knocking into him playfully with her shoulder. “What’s the point in having a gay brother if we can’t talk about boys together?”

“You’re the worst,” he said, grabbing his pillow and trying to hit her in the face with it. Naturally, being Pilar, she wrestled it away from him immediately and hit him so hard with his own pillow that he nearly crashed into the headboard. She continued to smack him with it, cackling and saying horrible things like, “Tell me who the cutest guy at school is! Who’s your celebrity crush? C’mon, Victor!”

By the time he finally managed to kick her out of his room, Victor was breathless, his hair was a mess, and he was feeling about a thousand times better than he had all day.

So Victor’s Christmas ended up being one of the strangest ones he’d ever experienced. He and Pilar were closer than they’d probably ever been, which was surprisingly nice, and of course Adrian was going out of his mind with excitement over the holiday, but things were still really tense between Victor and Armando. Although, actually, it wasn’t just Victor. It felt like Armando was withdrawn from everyone, barely speaking, and whenever he attempted to smile it never reached his eyes.

Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve also brought up some mixed emotions. It was the first time he’d been back to Sacred Heart since hearing the homophobic announcement nearly two weeks earlier. The previous Sunday had been the day after his shopping trip with Benji and he’d still been riding high on the fact that Benji had just agreed to be his boyfriend. The last thing he’d wanted to deal with was church, so Victor had faked another stomach illness and stayed home.

Going back to church for the holiday service was awful and wonderful all at once. It was difficult to see Father Hurtado, but the church looked so different, almost like another place entirely, all lit up at night with candles and decorated in red and green garlands. Victor had always loved Midnight Mass. He liked standing there with his family, singing Christmas carols in the soft glow of the candle light. He had really wanted to enjoy it, but it didn’t feel the same this year, the beauty of the moment marred by the memory of the things that Father Hurtado and Armando had said.

On Christmas day Victor wasn’t allowed out of the house, so he had to ask Felix to come pick up his own present, and also to deliver one to Benji. Benji’s gift for Victor arrived via a chat message on Christmas morning, and Victor snuck away from his family for a few minutes to go watch the video Benji had sent him in his room.

He hit play, and there was Benji, sitting on a chair in his own bedroom, his guitar strapped to his chest. He looked over at the camera, and then pushed his hair back a little nervously before saying, “Hey, Victor, Merry Christmas! Once again, I’m so, so happy to hear about everything working out okay with you and Pilar. I’m sorry you didn’t get to come out to her yourself, but the fact that she was totally accepting and supportive is amazing. Okay, I actually have another present for you which I’ll give you whenever you’re free from house arrest, but this will have to do for now. It’s, uh, a Dolly Parton cover. Cheesy, right? But I hope you like it. The lyrics kinda made me think of you.”

He began to strum out an upbeat tune, long fingers mesmerizing as they moved deftly across the strings. Victor’s heart began to speed up at the first sound of Benji’s voice, singing soft and sweet.

“I can’t forget you, ever since the moment that I met you, you’ve been on my mind,” Benji sang, adding a bit of a Dolly-esque twang to the words. He looked up at the camera, a small smile spreading across his lips. “And I need to somehow let you know, that I think about you all the time.”

He transitioned into the chorus, the melody of the guitar and his voice blending together in a strong swell of music. “So when you think about love, think about me. I can give you more than you’ll ever need. Sooner or later every heart needs some company, when you think about love, think about me.”

Victor had never heard the song before but he already knew that Benji’s cover was perfect, that his voice was hitting all the notes just right, that the way he was moving his hands expertly over the guitar was sending a thrill right through Victor’s body that was only partly due to the sound of the rhythm.

“We were strangers, now I’m already wrapped around your finger. Oh what’s a heart to do?” Benji tossed his hair back in between the lines, and Victor felt a physical ache at the need to brush it away behind his ear for him. Every little detail of the performance deserved Victor’s total attention, from Benji’s lips forming the words of the love song, to the tight-fitting white shirt he was wearing, to the way his brown eyes were shining as they looked steadily at the camera, to the movement of his hands. “’Cause it lingers, and the thought of you, wanting me as much as I want you.”

Benji flowed smoothly into the chorus again, and then belted out in a strong, powerful voice, “Makes me blue, I’m not holding you tonight. ‘Cause only you can satisfy this heart of mine.”

The chorus repeated again, a little softer, slowly fading away into the strumming of the guitar and a gentle repetition of the words, “When you think about love, think about me,” over and over again, until Victor was sure that love and Benji were all he’d be thinking about for a very long time.


	25. Hey Babe, Let's Go Out Tonight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: homophobia, homophobic slurs (including the "f" word), description of a serious mental illness, and a reference to what might have been a suicide attempt
> 
> This chapter deals with some heavy issues, so please check the warnings above and read carefully. 
> 
> Yikes, 10K again! How does this keep happening?? The title for this chapter comes from David Bowie's "Rebel Rebel".

The day after Christmas, Victor was only on day three of his two weeks of being grounded, and he was already starting to go crazy just sitting around at home all the time. The only place he was allowed to go was Brasstown, but he wasn’t scheduled to work that day, and if he didn’t get out of the house soon he was going to actually murder one of his family members. So he begged his mom to let him take Beau out to the back field, and after some intensely pleading looks she finally gave in.

Victor put on a coat and boots and slipped out quickly before anyone could see him and ask to join him. He loved his family, he really did, but they had spent so much time together celebrating the holidays and he just really needed a little break from all of them.

It wasn’t the nicest day to be outside. The overcast sky was a thick, gunmetal gray, and a bitter wind kept seeking out the places where he was most exposed, whipping over the back of his neck and stinging his bare hands as they gripped the reigns. Beau picked his way carefully over the dirt path that led into the nature reserve behind the Salazar property, stepping over bits of brush that had been blown into the path by the wind.

Victor had planned to ride Beau around one of the longer trails, just for the sake of being out of the house for a while and letting Beau get some exercise, but he wasn’t staying as warm in his thin coat as he’d like, and pretty soon he was starting to shiver. He pulled Beau over by a stream and let him take a drink while Victor huddled on an outcropping of rock that was blessedly sheltered by a thick tangle of bushes and cactus. He’d been sitting there for about five minutes when his phone started buzzing with a call from Benji to video chat.

“Hey,” he said, answering the call. Benji’s face appeared, frowning at the screen, no doubt confused by all the cactus he could see just past Victor’s head.

“Hi. Where are you right now?”

Victor rolled his eyes at himself. “Oh, I just thought that riding Beau around in forty degree weather with strong wind would be a fun way to spend the morning.”

“So clearly I’ve been hanging around a crazy person,” Benji said, laughing at Victor. He pulled the camera back, revealing that he was sitting in a cushy looking armchair in his living room, in a dark green hoodie and gray pajama pants despite the fact that it was nearly eleven thirty. Victor had to admit he was really enjoying the sight of Benji in his PJ’s, his hair loose and a little fluffy without any product in it, looking so relaxed. “Meanwhile at the Campbell house, we’re doing Boxing Day properly.”

The camera swung over to show Amelia tucked up on the couch nearby, a blanket over her legs and her feet propped up on the coffee table. She looked up from the book she was reading and gave him a friendly wave.

“Happy Christmas, Victor!” she called out. “Did you have a nice time with your family?”

Victor was not going to get into the details of what a weird and somewhat uncomfortable Christmas he’d had, so he just said, “Yeah, it’s been fun, thanks. Merry Christmas!”

The camera swung back around to Benji and Victor asked him, “What’s Boxing Day?”

“It’s a British thing,” Benji explained. “Basically it’s the day after Christmas and it’s celebrated with extreme laziness and a lot of unhealthy eating.”

“Normally I would say that sounds amazing, but after the last few days I can’t actually take any more sitting around at home and doing nothing,” Victor said with a sigh. “I have been doing plenty of unhealthy eating though.”

Benji got up and appeared to be walking down the hallway to his room. “It’s a shame you can’t come over and hang out with us,” he said, as he stepped inside and closed his door behind him. He went to sit down on his bed. “How have you been holding up over there?”

“I don’t know. Okay I guess. I’m mostly just really bored. I’ve been kind of avoiding my dad, which hasn’t been very hard to do since he also seems to be avoiding everyone else. I thought things were getting better with him and my mom, but they’ve gone back to hardly speaking to each other this week. How about you? It must be pretty weird not having your brother at home.”

Benji nodded, his expression clouding over, and Victor kind of regretted bringing it up. “Yeah, it’s been really strange. It’s the first year that the four of us haven’t all been together for Christmas. I mean, he told us he was going to visit Tammy’s family, like, three weeks ago, so it’s not like I didn’t have time to get used to the idea, but it’s still weird.”

“I’m so sorry, Benji. Have you talked to him at all since Thanksgiving?”

“Not really,” Benji said, shaking his head. “He skyped us from Tammy’s house yesterday to say hi and everything, and we opened some presents together, but that’s about it. Honestly, I’m not sure I really have much to say to him right now anyway. What he did really hurt me, and I’m sure he knows that, and until he apologizes for it I don’t want to just talk to him like everything is normal.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Victor said, thinking about his own strained relationship with Armando. He searched his mind for a more cheerful topic to talk about, and remembered the video Benji had sent him, which he’d probably managed to watch about five thousand times in the past twenty four hours. “I really loved your Christmas present, by the way.”

Benji’s sadness disappeared quickly at that, a hesitant smile stealing across his face. “Oh, that’s good. I know that song is, like, super dorky, but I don’t know… there’s something kinda sweet about it. I’m glad you liked it and you don’t find my cheesiness too embarrassing.”

Benji was looking at Victor quickly and glancing away again, his smile not quite fully formed, strangely self-conscious all of a sudden. Victor found it really confusing until he remembered something Benji had told him a while ago, about how Benji’s ex had made him feel bad at times about being a romantic. It was impossible for Victor to understand how anyone could have been on the receiving end of a romantic gesture from Benji and failed to be totally blown away by it.

There was no way Victor could let the moment pass without somehow showing Benji just how much he’d appreciated what Benji had done for him. Victor felt his cheeks heating up as he said, “I could never be embarrassed by you. You’re thoughtful, and sweet, and patient. My point is… you’re the best, Benji. I am so incredibly lucky to have you.”

There were few things that made Victor feel happier than seeing Benji smile the way he did then, without any reservations or even the slightest hint of the self-consciousness from a moment before. “Thanks, Victor,” Benji said softly, staring at Victor and licking his lip in a way that made Victor want to kiss him a crazy amount. “And thank you so much for your present, I love it.”

“Oh, no worries. I hope it fit you okay.”

“It’s perfect. I’m totally wearing it to that New Year’s Eve party that we’re playing at next week.” He winced guiltily. “Oh, shit, sorry. I forgot that you’ll still be grounded then. That really sucks.”

“Ugh, I can’t believe I’m going to miss your guys’ first performance together,” Victor groaned.

“Well, I’m sure we can get someone to record it for you. You should let Felix know about the party, maybe he could come and, like, livestream you into it by video chat or something.”

It wasn’t the same as actually getting to be there and they both knew it, but Victor sighed and nodded. “Yeah, that’s a good idea.”

He was starting to shiver again from sitting still for too long, so he got up and pulled Beau away from the grass he’d been nibbling on and began to lead him back down the trail toward home. Benji perked up at the sight of the horse, saying “Hey, there Beau!”

Beau’s ears flicked a little at the sound of his name coming from the phone. Victor said, “I wish you could come over again. It’d be fun to take you riding someday.”

“I’ve never been horseback riding. Well, unless you count that thing they do at the fair where they drop you on the back of a pony when you’re five and take you around in circles.” Benji suddenly looked just as sad as Victor felt. “I wish I could come over, too.”

“I’m sorry. About my dad. I know it must have hurt you to find out that he doesn’t want you coming to our house anymore.”

Victor could tell from the look in Benji’s eyes that it had hurt him quite a lot, but Benji just said, “That’s not your fault, Victor. It’s so shitty that you have to deal with that. But you know, this doesn’t mean you should give up on your dad completely. I know he’s being really homophobic right now, but he might surprise you later. People do change, sometimes, especially for the people that they love. My dad’s actually been a little better lately. I guess it’s one perk of not having Isaac home this year, there’s no one to distract him away from hanging out with me. We watched the first couple episodes of that Ken Burns Country Music documentary together last night and it was surprisingly nice. So you never really know, Victor, it might not turn out as bad as you expect.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Victor said, but his heart wasn’t really in it.

“I thought I was hallucinating or something last night, because my dad never wants to bring up anything gay, but he actually asked me if I’d met any nice boys at school,” Benji said, clearly trying to steer Victor away from the depressing topic of Armando. “I think he realized that Mum knows something and he’s feeling left out. Oh, but I didn’t tell him about you, though, don’t worry. I wouldn’t do that without your permission.”

Victor thought about it for a long moment and then said, “You can. If you want. I mean, your mom already figured it out, right, so I guess it’s fine. Just, maybe warn them that I’m not a hundred percent out yet?”

“Did I mention that you’re also the best?” Benji said with a grin. “Because you are.”

“I miss you,” Victor admitted, feeling a little shy saying it out loud. “I know it’s only been four days, but…”

“You’re working tomorrow, right? The closing shift?” Victor nodded. “I’m scheduled to open, but I know how much Angie hates closing so I bet I could get her to switch with me. I’ll see what I can do. I miss you, too, V.”

Victor smiled, already looking forward to the next day.

That night after dinner, Victor was in his room replying to a message from Simon when he got an incoming call from Felix. It was a little weird of him not to use the walkie-talkie but Victor figured Felix must be out somewhere.

“Hey, what’s up?” he said as he took the call.

“Victor, I need your help with something,” Felix said, in a tone of voice that Victor might not have ever heard from his best friend before. Felix sounded like he was on the verge of panic, his voice high and a little breathy, like he was struggling to keep calm.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s my mom. I don’t know what happened, I just came in her room and I found her on the floor. There’s something wrong with her.”

Victor’s heart began to race. “Did you call 911?”

“No, not yet. I didn’t know if I should, I mean, I don’t know if we can afford the medical bills or whatever,” Felix said in a rush. “I don’t know what I should do. She’s, uh, she’s breathing. Maybe she just like passed out or something?”

“Felix, I think you have to call 911. Like, right now.”

“Okay,” Felix said, sounding like he just needed someone else to make the decision for him.

“I’m going to come over there, okay? You call the ambulance and I’ll be right there.”

As soon as the call ended, Victor raced to grab his coat and went out into the living room. Isabel had taken Pilar and Adrian out to some ice skating event at a local mall and they hadn’t returned yet, so it was just Armando home at the moment. He was sitting in the recliner watching a basketball game when Victor approached him.

“I need to go to Felix’s house,” Victor said. “It’s an emergency. Something happened to his mom.”

Armando frowned in surprise. “What do you mean? Is she okay?”

“I don’t know. Felix is calling an ambulance right now, but I just wanna go and make sure they’re all right.”

Armando nodded and jumped up. To Victor’s surprise he grabbed his own coat out of the closet and slipped on a pair of shoes. “Okay. I’m coming with you.”

Armando drove them to Felix’s house in his car just to save them the five minutes it would take to walk over. The driveway was empty except for the old car that Lisa and Felix shared. Victor ran to the front door as soon as they pulled in and knocked loudly. Felix opened it a few seconds later.

He’d never seen Felix looking the way he did just then, like a complete wreck, his eyes wide with fear and his hair even more of a disaster than it always was. “The, uh, the house is kinda messy. Please don’t freak out about it right now.”

Victor didn’t know why Felix was worried about whether the house was clean or not when his mom was in danger, but then he and Armando stepped inside and Victor’s breath caught in his throat. Everywhere he looked, the familiar spaces were packed tight with towering piles of stuff. Mostly boxes, in some of which Victor could see things like magazines and books, or folded stacks of clothing, or old VHS tapes and DVD’s. There were even some brand new objects still in their original packaging, toys and kitchen appliances and all kinds of stuff.

“Felix,” Victor said, staring around at all of it in shock. “What is all this?”

Armando cleared his throat. “Victor, not now. Where’s Lisa?”

Felix led them quickly through the maze of boxes to Lisa’s bedroom. They had to wind their way around a huge mountain of clothing just to get to her, where she was lying prone on the floor next to the closet. He hadn’t seen Lisa in quite awhile, since Felix never wanted to hang out at his own house, so Victor was startled by her appearance. She was so thin, and her hair looked greasy and unwashed. She seemed to be wearing a blue nightgown under the blanket Felix had draped over her. Victor could see that she was breathing, but not very well, each breath accompanied by a kind of wheezing sound, and her skin was so pale it was almost gray.

“You called an ambulance already, right?” Armando confirmed, as he tried to find enough space to kneel down beside Lisa. He pressed a couple of fingers against the side of her neck.

Felix nodded. “They should be here really soon.”

Sure enough, about a minute later there was a knock on the door, and then Armando and Victor had to try to back into the tiny space near the bed to give the EMT’s enough room to come in. One of them surveyed the area with concern and told them, “We’re going to need to clear some of this stuff away so we can lay the gurney down. Can you help me move these clothes?”

Armando and Victor started grabbing piles of them and tossing them onto the bed along with the EMT, and once there was enough room they put the gurney on the floor beside Lisa and quickly transferred her onto it. A few minutes later they had her in the ambulance and Felix was climbing into the back with them.

“Where are you taking her?” Armando asked one of the EMT’s.

“Brandon Presbyterian Hospital is the closest,” she answered.

“Okay, we’ll meet you there, Felix,” Armando said just before the doors closed.

Victor and Armando climbed into the car and headed toward the hospital. They didn’t speak for the first few minutes, but then Armando asked, “Did you know about all that? All the stuff at their house?”

Victor shook his head, feeling completely overwhelmed by shock and guilt. How had he not known about any of it? How could Felix have hidden something like that from him for such a long time?

But Victor had hidden secrets from Felix, too, and he understood better than most people why it was sometimes difficult to share something that made you feel so vulnerable. Felix had probably felt scared, maybe embarrassed. Maybe he’d thought that he could handle the problem all on his own. Victor mostly just felt angry with himself, for being so wrapped up in his own drama that he hadn’t even noticed how much Felix must have been struggling. Felix had given him so much support, had been there for him when he felt like his life was falling apart, and meanwhile Victor had just ignored the clues that something was wrong because he’d been so self-absorbed this past year.

There definitely had been clues. The way that Felix never invited him over, didn’t even want Victor to pick him up at his house for a ride, the way he sometimes seemed so exhausted, like he hadn’t slept well. The way he was always so grateful for the food that Isabel would send him home with and how he was always the one doing everything for himself and his mom. How many times in the last year had he told Victor he couldn’t hang out until after he’d finished doing the laundry or the grocery shopping or some other task?

They arrived at the hospital and were told to sit in the waiting room of the ER. It wasn’t a very big hospital, so there were only a few other people in the room. A woman with an infant in her arms. An elderly couple. Victor sank down into one of the chairs and stared blankly at the green carpeting under his feet.

“I didn’t know about any of it,” Victor admitted, after Armando had sat down beside him. “He never told me anything, but I should’ve known. I should’ve asked.”

“I should’ve checked in on her, too. It’s been a long time since I went over there to see if they needed anything,” Armando said, with a heavy sigh. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I haven’t been a very good neighbor lately.”

After a moment’s hesitation, he reached out, put a hand on Victor’s shoulder. “It’s not your fault, though, for not knowing. Sometimes people just don’t know how to reach out for help when they need it.”

Armando hadn’t touched Victor in a while, maybe not since that awful day when Victor had torn his room apart and then Armando had held him as he cried. He’d always been the kind of dad to give out a lot of hugs and pats on the back, and Victor hadn’t realized how much he’d missed it until just then. He leaned into the touch a little, and a second later Armando tugged him into a slightly awkward hug over the arm of the chair in between them.

“I’m sorry if I haven’t been the best dad lately, either,” he said quietly. Armando pulled back, wiping at his eyes a bit. “Things have been tough for all of us, but you guys deserve better. I’m so sorry, _mijo_.”

Victor didn’t really know what to say to that, so he just mumbled, “it’s okay,” even though it wasn’t, not at all. Armando didn’t even know the extent to which he’d hurt Victor recently and there was no way that Victor could tell him. At least not now. Even if he could, he doubted his father would ever truly understand it.

They spent the next two hours sitting there quietly, staring at their phones or flipping through the magazines left in a pile on the table nearby. Armando got up at some point and wandered off, returning with two cups of watery coffee that was too acidic and bitter, but the heat of the paper cup in Victor’s hands was comforting all the same.

Finally, Felix emerged from a large door that swung open electronically and came over to them.

“She’s doing a little better now,” he said, everything about him from his voice to his body language to his facial expression completely worn out. “They did some stuff to get her comfortable and breathing better, so she’s just sleeping now. They, um… they said she’s going to have to be admitted for a few days probably.”

“Did they say what happened to her?” Victor asked.

Felix swallowed hard. “It was, uh – it was her medication, she um-”

He broke off, his face suddenly twisting up in a grimace of pain as he began to cry, “She took too many of her pain pills. No one was – was saying it, but – but I could tell they thought she did it on purpose and-”

Felix was crying too hard to continue, and Victor couldn’t stand to watch him fall apart and not do anything, so he got up quickly and wrapped his arms around his best friend. Felix held him back tightly and just cried into his shoulder for awhile as Armando looked on with a mix of concern and sympathy.

Eventually they persuaded Felix to come back to the Salazar house for the night, as it was getting pretty late by that point. Armando must have already filled Isabel in on what happened because she didn’t say much when they walked in, just gave Felix a hug and then guided him to Victor’s room, where she’d already set up an air mattress on the floor for him. It was the same one Felix used to sleep on so frequently back in middle school, that year when Lisa had been fighting cancer.

Victor let Felix borrow some of his pajamas, and when they were both ready for bed he asked, “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”

“No,” Felix said, lying down on the air mattress. “Thanks. I just wanna go to sleep now.”

“Okay,” Victor said, getting up to turn out the light. He climbed into his bed and stared up at the ceiling for a minute before whispering, “I’m really sorry, Felix, that I never tried to ask you about how your mom was doing, or tried to make sure you guys were okay. I’ve been a really crappy friend to you lately.”

Felix sighed. “I didn’t want you to know, Victor. I guess ‘cause you knowing about it would make it all real, and then I’d have to deal with what it meant. I’ve just been so scared that – that if anyone found out how bad things had gotten, they’d take her away from me.”

“Felix…” Victor started, a little hesitant. “I think she needs help. Both of you do. You can’t really keep living the way you have been.”

“Yeah. I know. I’ve known that for awhile probably, but I didn’t want to accept it.”

“You know I’ll help you, right? This best friend thing goes both ways,” Victor pointed out. “Whatever you need, I’m here for you.”

“Thanks, Victor.”

They both fell quiet after that, but Victor could tell from the sound of Felix’s breathing that he wasn’t really sleeping. It seemed to take them both a long time to fall asleep that night.

Felix was so quiet the next day, barely speaking to anyone at breakfast, nothing at all like his usual self. Even Adrian was sending him little worried glances all through the meal. After they’d eaten, Armando took them to Felix’s house, where Felix insisted on going inside on his own in order to grab some of Lisa’s things, and then they headed over to the hospital. When they asked about Lisa at the receptionist’s desk, they were told that she’d been moved over to the psychiatric ward, and the look on Felix’s face at hearing those words had been truly awful. They walked over in silence, Victor having no idea what he could possibly say to make Felix feel better. He settled on just putting a comforting hand on his friend’s shoulder before Felix was led away to her room. She was only allowed one visitor at a time for the moment, so Armando and Victor stayed in the waiting room.

About an hour later Felix came back out, looking pale and exhausted. “She’s sleeping again now,” he said. “She seems a little better this morning. At least, that’s what the nurse told me. She didn’t really feel like talking much.”

Just then, a short woman with close-cropped curly hair and warm brown skin approached them. She was smiling in a kind, non-threatening manner, but Felix still tensed up when she said, “Hi there, my name is Diane and I’m a social worker. I have some things I’d like to discuss with all of you if you have time now.”

“Sure,” Armando answered, when it became apparent that Felix wasn’t going to say anything. Diane led them down a confusing series of hallways until they arrived at an area marked as the Family Center by a large sign over the door. She took them into a small room in the back, with a desk which she went to sit behind, and a few chairs placed in front that the three of them sat in.

“So, Felix, these are your neighbors, right?” Diane confirmed.

“Yeah, uh, I’m Armando Salazar, and this is my son, Victor,” Armando explained after Felix only nodded and stared down at his hands, tugging absently on the cuffs of his jacket. “Felix called us for help yesterday when Lisa had her accident.”

“And Felix stayed at your home last night, correct?” Armando nodded. Diane turned back to Felix again, who didn’t meet her eyes. “So it’s just you and your mom at home from what I understand. Are there any other adults that help care for you?”

“No. My dad took off a long time ago. It’s just me and Mom,” Felix answered.

“Okay. And do you have any relatives that you can contact? Like grandparents, aunts or uncles, anybody like that?”

“Just my Aunt Cathy. My grandpa died when I was six, and my grandma’s in a nursing home in Philadelphia. That’s where Aunt Cathy lives, too.”

Diane nodded and made a quick note. “All right. I’m going to need your aunt’s contact information so that we can get in touch with her and let her know what’s going on. If it’s at all possible, it would be best if she could take care of you for a little while, at least until your mother is doing better. It’s a little hard to guess how long the recovery process will take. Physically she’s in a much better condition today, but it’s her mental health that we’re most concerned about right now. In the meantime, your mom gave permission for you to continue staying with the Salazars, if that’s all right with you Felix.”

Felix nodded silently again.

Diane collected Armando’s contact information, and then asked to speak privately with Felix. About a half an hour later they came out of the room, and then Diane spoke with Armando for a few minutes in her office, and finally they were able to leave. Lisa’s nurse told them she was still sleeping and probably would be for a lot of the day, since the medication she was currently on caused drowsiness, so they ended up heading back to the Salazar house.

In the evening Victor reluctantly left Felix with his family and went to work at Brasstown. He’d already texted Benji to let him know some of what had happened the night before, but he hadn’t mentioned the weird piles of stuff at Felix’s house or the fact that Lisa was currently in the psychiatric ward of the hospital. Some of that felt too private for him to share without Felix’s permission.

“How’s Felix’s mom doing?” Benji asked. There were only five people in the entire cafe at that moment, so Victor and Benji were just hanging out by the register without much to do. Victor had been idly dragging a cloth over the counter, but he set it aside then, giving up on the pretense of being productive.

“Better. She’s sleeping a lot, so I haven’t seen her, but Felix said she’s more stable today.”

Benji nodded sympathetically, coming to lean against the counter near Victor, close but not quite touching. “And how’s Felix holding up?”

“I don’t know. Not good. I’ve never seen him like this before,” Victor said. “I’m really worried about him.”

“So he’s just gonna stay with you guys while his mom’s in the hospital?”

“Yeah. I guess he has an aunt that might be able to come help out, but she lives pretty far away so…” Victor sighed. He glanced around them to see if anyone was in hearing distance, but the few customers they had were all located on the far side of the room. “Honestly, I feel like such a terrible friend for not noticing anything was wrong. His mom’s health has obviously been getting worse for a long time now, and I’ve been so wrapped up in my own crap that I never paid very much attention to what was going on with him. I just feel so selfish when I think of all the times he’s been there for me lately…”

Benji leaned in just enough that their arms were lightly brushing against each other, and dragged his thumb across the back of Victor’s hand, below the counter where no one would see. “You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, Victor. It was Felix’s choice whether or not to tell you what was going on, and maybe he had a reason for not wanting to talk about it. I’m sure that he knew you’d listen if he did want to talk. You’re one of the most caring people I’ve ever met. You spend all your time and energy trying to take care of other people and it’s okay if you can’t be there for everyone every time. There’s some stuff that people just have to work through on their own and all we can do is be there for them when they’re ready to ask for help. I think you’d know something about that, right?”

“Yeah,” Victor agreed. “I’m pretty sure I do.”

The rest of the shift passed by quicker than Victor would have expected, considering there was almost nothing for them to do the entire time aside from unimportant busywork and occasionally making a drink or wiping down a table. They spent the time in between talking and entertaining each other with stupid stuff, like Benji drawing little caricatures of people at school or regular customers for Victor to guess the identities of, and Victor teaching Benji some slang and mild curse words in Spanish. By the time the last customers had left and they’d completed all the closing tasks, Victor couldn’t believe how fast the evening had flown by. Even though he wanted to get home and check in on Felix, he found himself wishing he could turn the clock back and just hang out with Benji for another five hour shift.

Victor waited by one of the tables while Benji was getting ready to leave, planning to give him a ride home as he’d been doing recently whenever they closed together. The cafe was bathed in a soft golden glow from the Christmas lights strung up overhead, which Victor always waited until the last minute to turn off. He was really going to miss them when they packed away all of the decorations after New Year’s. Brasstown after closing was beginning to feel like it belonged to him and Benji, like it was theirs for as long as they were the only two people in it. Tonight one of Benji’s playlists was pouring quietly out of the speakers, a mix of chill indie songs that Victor didn’t recognize but liked. He was starting to dread the moment when he’d have to go home.

“So, here’s your other Christmas present,” Benji said, emerging from the back room with a box wrapped in shiny red paper and silver ribbon. He handed it over to Victor a little nervously. “I hope you like it.”

Victor shook his head disbelievingly. “But you already gave me a gift the other day.”

“That was just a song, it wasn’t a big deal,” Benji insisted. “This is your real present.”

“Oh yeah, it was just a really amazing song that you obviously put a lot of time into learning and practicing, just for me,” Victor said, rolling his eyes. “No big deal at all.”

“Okay, okay,” Benji said in mock exasperation, but his cheeks were definitely looking a little pink. He nodded toward the gift. “Hurry up and open it already.”

Victor unwrapped the paper to find a shoe box underneath, and when he opened it and pulled apart the tissue paper, he was so shocked he audibly gasped and nearly dropped the box on the floor. “Holy shit,” he breathed.

Benji laughed. “Uh, I hope that’s a good ‘holy shit’.”

“Yes. Yes it is a very, very good ‘holy shit.’” Victor turned to stare wide-eyed at him. “Benji, these are, like, genuine Air Jordan 1 Chicago Black Toes.”

“Yep. I mean, I’m not as much of a sneaker nerd as you, but yeah, that’s what I figured out when I looked them up online.”

“But these go for hundreds of dollars.” Victor couldn’t stop looking between Benji and the absolutely gorgeous pair of shoes he was somehow holding in his hands. They were smooth and perfect in red, black, and white, the Nike swoosh curving all the way up to the heel.

“Well, not when you happen to find them at a thrift store just outside of Brandon run by people who probably wouldn’t know Air Jordans from a pair of Skechers.” Benji grinned. “I won’t tell you what they cost me, but it’s safe to say I didn’t have to break out any Benjamins. I couldn’t believe how lucky I got finding these. Guess they were just meant to be yours.”

The first day of school flashed through Victor’s mind as he thought of his first meeting with Benji, and the way Benji was looking at him just then made it clear he was remembering the same thing.

Victor laughed a little in pure delight and kissed Benji soft and sweet and slow. The shoe box was getting in the way of things, but he couldn’t bring himself to put it down just yet. He pulled back enough to rest his forehead against Benji’s and said, “Thank you so much. You’re officially the most amazing boyfriend in the world.”

“Hm, I like the sound of that,” Benji said, and kissed Victor back.

By the time New Year’s Eve finally arrived, Victor had been grounded for eight long days. It was so much worse than the last time it had happened, since at least after Mia’s party he’d still been able to leave the house each day for school, where he got to see his friends and Benji and go to basketball practice, and it hadn’t really effected him as much. Unfortunately, this time around he was just stuck at home all the time unless he had a shift at Brasstown, which had become the highlight of his week, but with business so slow at the moment he hadn’t been scheduled to work very much, and two of those shifts had been with Sarah rather than Benji. He’d only seen Benji once since the night they worked the closing shift together, which was three days ago, and he felt like he was going to lose his mind with a combination of Benji-withdrawal and cabin fever.

It was also not helping his frustration at all knowing that the reasons for his grounding this time felt less justified than the previous occasion. Yes, he knew that running out of the house had been a stupid thing to do and he deserved to be punished for it, but he’d run away because of what Armando had done. Because he’d banned Victor from ever inviting Benji over to their house again based on some bullshit homophobic idea that Benji would be a bad influence on Adrian. Just thinking about it still infuriated Victor and made him want to get into a shouting match with his father all over again.

Victor’s feelings of anger at Armando had lessened a bit around the time of Lisa’s accident, maybe because of the way Armando had stepped up to help Felix without any hesitation and the way he’d hugged Victor that night in the emergency room and apologized to him. But the past few days Victor found his temper flaring up more and more whenever his dad was around, whenever he found himself really missing Benji and wanting more than anything to escape from the house and go see him.

Having Felix there helped a little bit, since it provided a distraction, but Felix had not been his usual self that week. He wanted to spend most of his time at the hospital with his mom or just sitting around somewhere quietly, texting with Lake or reading. Victor had tried to talk with him more about what was going on with him, but Felix had remained tight-lipped about it and kept brushing off all of Victor’s attempts to get him to open up. As much as Victor wanted to be a better friend to Felix now, it was pretty hard to do when Felix wasn’t willing to let him in.

That evening Victor was sitting in the living room playing a game on his phone while Felix was curled up in the armchair with a book when he got a text from Benji.

_I’m all set for the party tonight. Really wish you could come too, it will seriously suck not having you there. Miss you_

This was followed by a selfie of Benji standing in his room wearing the t-shirt that Victor had bought him for Christmas. It was an off-white vintage shirt featuring a faded image of Bowie’s Aladdin Sane cover art in gray, blue and pink, which he’d found at the same second-hand shop he and Benji had gone to before Homecoming. As soon as he’d seen it on the rack he’d known it was perfect, soft and a little worn but in a way that made it feel lived in, and it seemed to fit Benji just right, tight enough to show off his strong upper body without actually being too small. Victor could not stop staring at the photo, tracing his eyes over the curves of Benji’s shoulders and arms, and he nearly jumped out of his skin when Pilar suddenly leaned over the back of the couch and said right next to his ear, “Ooh, nice. _Qu_ é _guapo.”_

“Pilar! _D_ _éjame estar!_ ” Victor squawked, shoving his phone into his pocket and glaring at her as she cackled.

Felix frowned at them. “Guapo… that’s… a glove?”

“No, _guante_ is glove. _Guapo_ is hot,” Pilar corrected, smirking at Victor, “As in, Benji was looking _super guapo_ in that photo.”

“I hate you so much,” Victor grumbled, as Pilar came around to sit on the couch next to him.

“So, what was that I saw about a party tonight?” Pilar asked.

“I can’t believe you. What happened to that promise you made to mind your own business?”

Pilar sighed. “I’m just bored, okay? There’s nothing to do right now. Most of my friends are busy with their families or traveling or whatever, and you two just sit around everyday doing nothing. If I don’t get out of this house soon I am seriously going to lose my mind.”

Victor knew the feeling, but Pilar wasn’t even grounded, she had no right complaining to him about feeling stir crazy.

Pilar looked over at Felix. “What about you? Aren’t you going out with your girlfriend tonight?”

Felix shook his head, looking even more depressed than before. “Can’t. She’s still in Barbados with her mom.”

“ _Barbados_?” Pilar echoed in surprise. “Like, the Caribbean?”

“Yeah, I guess her mom has this thing about liking to spend the winter vacation somewhere warm and tropical.”

“So you two are just planning on ringing in the New Year here, pining away for your significant others, like a couple of losers,” Pilar said, raising a brow archly. “Even though Mom and Dad aren’t even home tonight. They’re probably not going to get back from that party at Dad’s new boss’s house until well after midnight.”

“So, what? You think we should sneak out of the house and go to this party?” Victor asked disbelievingly. “Are you crazy? Who would watch Adrian? We can’t just leave him here alone.”

Pilar considered this, and then said, “It’s fine. We’ll just take him over to Nancy’s house.”

Nancy was an older woman in her sixties who lived alone in a small house a couple miles down the road. Victor, Felix, and Pilar helped her out with yard work in exchange for a little money sometimes, especially during the summer months. She absolutely adored Adrian and had babysat him on a few occasions when Victor and Pilar weren’t able to.

“Mom and Dad would totally find out about it and then I’d be grounded for the rest of my life,” Victor protested. “There’s no way we could get away with it.”

“Look, all we have to do is bribe Adrian into secrecy with some candy, and make sure that we’re back before Mom and Dad get home. We don’t have to actually stay out till midnight, we can just go hang out at the party for like an hour or so, you can see your boyfriend, and then we’ll come right back.”

Despite his reservations, it was sounding more tempting to Victor the more he thought about it. He hadn’t seen Benji in days, and this would be the very first time Benji’s band was playing anywhere, and he really didn’t want to miss it. Plus, he was still so pissed off at his dad for being such a prejudiced asshole, and part of him really wanted to do something to get back at him.

“Maybe…” Victor said slowly, and Pilar’s eyes lit up with excitement.

“Yes! Oh my god, let’s do it!”

“I don’t know, guys, this sounds like a really terrible idea,” Felix said. “I mean, your parents have been doing a lot for me lately and sneaking around, breaking their rules, seems like a kind of crappy way of repaying them for all of it. And seriously, we probably would get caught.”

“Ugh, come on, Felix,” Pilar groaned, “it’ll be really fun! Wouldn’t it make you feel better to get out of the house for a little while?”

Felix shook his head. “No, look, why don’t you guys just go without me. I’ll stay here and watch Adrian, so you’re less likely to get caught. I’m really not in the mood for a party right now anyway. Just make sure that you actually get back before your parents, okay? I do not want to be stuck explaining to them where you went.”

“Are you sure?” Victor asked. He had a feeling that going to this party was a really stupid thing to do, but now that the idea of going out, seeing Benji, and breaking his dad’s rules had wormed its way into his head, he couldn’t seem to stop himself from giving into it.

“Yeah, but I’m serious. Do not be late. I will never forgive either of you if you leave me here alone to deal with your parents tonight.”

Pilar bounced off the couch, grabbing Victor by the arm. “You are amazing, Felix! All right, c’mon, _hermano_ , let’s get ready for this party.”  
  


A short while later, Victor and Pilar were both dressed and climbing into the truck. Pilar had put on one of her usual over-the-top gothic looking outfits, complete with fishnets, a short plaid skirt, and some evil looking white dude on a black t-shirt with too many facial piercings. Victor, on the other hand, had just been planning on going out in what he’d been wearing, but Pilar had forced him into a nicer pair of jeans and a long-sleeved dark red shirt that he rarely wore anymore because it was too tight. The one item of clothing that had been his own choice were the new Jordans, which he was super excited about wearing out for the first time. It was almost ten o’clock, so Adrian was asleep, thankfully, and the party would probably be going strong already by the time they arrived.

It turned out to be in one of the large houses over near the university, not far from Mia’s, and from the people coming and going through the front door and passing by the brightly lit windows, it was definitely already in full swing.

“All right, we’re only staying until eleven thirty, and no drinking, okay? You can’t get us caught by being all hungover tomorrow,” Victor warned when he found a spot along the street to park. Pilar pursed her lips.

“Oh, so now _you’re_ in charge of this plan? _R_ _elájat_ _e_ , I promise to be a very good girl and meet you back at the truck at exactly eleven thirty. And I will drink if I want to, but I’m not gonna get wasted or anything.”

Victor pinched the bridge of his nose. “This is the dumbest idea we’ve ever had. We’re so going to get caught.”

He followed his sister into the house, which apparently belonged to some senior at school that they didn’t even know, and quickly lost sight of her after that. Benji’s band had obviously already begun playing, based on the sound of Benji’s voice belting out the lyrics to an alternative pop song that Victor vaguely recognized. As he made his way through the throng of people toward the music, he ran into some of the guys from the basketball team who gave him friendly nods, and a few other people that he recognized from school.

The band was set up in a corner of a huge living room that was absolutely packed with bodies, so crowded Victor could hardly squeeze through them. One guy bumped into him and sloshed cold beer down Victor’s arm, which he tried to wipe away with the palm of his hand, and just ended up sticky all over. But finally he pushed through and there was Benji, eyes widening in surprise and almost missing a note as he caught sight of Victor. He recovered quickly and continued with the song, though, his gaze drifting over to meet Victor’s frequently as he performed. Victor was trying his best not to stare back too obviously, but it was extremely difficult when Benji was there in that tight Bowie t-shirt, hands working the guitar deftly, his voice strong and sweet.

There were three other members of the band beside Benji, a bassist, a keyboardist, and a drummer. The first two were guys that Victor had never seen before, but the drummer was a girl that he was fairly certain he’d seen around school, who might have been a junior or senior. Despite the fact that they hadn’t been rehearsing together for very long, they were playing together amazingly well, with a kind of energy that was really fun to watch. Of course, it probably helped that he couldn’t take his eyes off their lead singer for more than five seconds, as much as he was trying to be inconspicuous about it.

“Victor!” someone shouted nearby, and he turned in surprise to see Feña working her way toward him. He felt a little stab of anxiety and hoped that she hadn’t caught the way he’d been looking at Benji just a moment before. “I didn’t know you were gonna be here. What do you think of the music?”

“They’re awesome,” he said.

“They really are, aren’t they?” Feña leaned in close and whispered, “There’s nothing like seeing your secret boyfriend looking all hot with a guitar.”

Victor’s heart stopped for a second as he gaped at her. “ _What?_ ” he managed to croak out.

She spoke again in that low voice, nodding toward the band. “See the bassist? That’s Carl. The guy I told you about. But remember, no one really knows we’re dating ‘cause my parents would totally lose their shit, so don’t say anything.”

“Oh,” Victor said weakly, trying to calm himself down after his near heart attack. “Uh, yeah, no problem. He seems cool.”

Carl was a tall guy with long hair pulled back in locks and dark brown skin. He actually was pretty hot, Victor noticed. Victor shifted on his feet nervously, wishing that Feña hadn’t run into him. The band had just transitioned into a new song, a cover of Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel” that had Benji glancing over at Victor with a smile, and Victor really wanted to just stare at him shamelessly through the whole thing but now he was scared to even look at him for more than a second with his friend right there next to him.

Victor awkwardly stood there and watched the band play the next couple of songs with Feña, making small talk with her and doing everything in his power not to be distracted by all of the very distracting things Benji kept doing, like flipping his hair back, or licking his lips, or catching Victor’s gaze with his warm brown eyes. It was really hot in the room, with so many people crammed in there, and everyone in the band was starting to look pretty overheated. Benji’s cheeks were a bit flushed, and Victor couldn’t not watch a bead of sweat roll its way slowly down the curve of his neck.

“Victor?” Feña said, and he jumped at the sound of her voice. She raised her brows. “I just asked if you wanted a drink?”

“Oh, uh, no, that’s okay. I’m gonna drive home after this.”

Feña nodded, but before she could leave to get one for herself, another girl appeared.

“Hey! How’s it going?” the girl said to Feña. She looked kind of familiar, like she went to their school but maybe was in a different grade than them. She was tall and a little bit willowy, with tan skin and shoulder length blond hair, dressed in fashionable clothes like some sort of Instagram model.

“Hey,” Feña greeted her friend. “I’m doing good. How’s your night been?”

“Better now,” the girl said, winking over at Victor. “Who’s this?”

Feña laughed. “Oh, this is Victor, he’s a sophomore, too. And single, just in case you were wondering.”

Victor stared at Feña in disbelief, but she just grinned at him teasingly.

“I’m Allie,” the girl said, extending a hand to Victor. He shook it and then jerked back quickly when she traced a finger over his wrist flirtatiously.

For the next ten minutes or so he stood there and chatted with the girls, but as the conversation went on, Allie kept drifting closer and closer to him, until she was basically hanging off his arm. “I’ve seen you at basketball games,” Allie said, when Feña cruelly abandoned him there to get herself a drink. “You’re really good.”

“Thanks,” Victor said, and tried to shift away from her a bit, but she seemed pretty tipsy and just leaned even heavier against his side, hands wrapped tight around his bicep. He didn’t know how to pry her off of him without accidentally dumping her on the floor. He glanced up at the band and happened to catch Benji’s eye just then. Benji was staring back at him with a strange look on his face, not exactly angry but definitely not pleased to see some girl draped all over Victor.

Allie leaned close to his ear suddenly and whispered, “You’re really cute. Wanna go somewhere quieter?”

“Um, sorry, I should – I have to go,” Victor said, finally pushing her away firmly. To his relief, she didn’t actually fall over or anything. “I see one of my friends over there. Uh, nice meeting you.”

Allie looked disappointed but let him go, and Victor quickly worked his way over to the kitchen where he poured himself a plastic cup of water. When he checked the time on his phone he saw that it was nearly eleven already. Feña found him again and asked, “What’s wrong? You weren’t into Allie?”

Victor refilled his cup, avoiding her eyes. “Um, not really. She seemed nice, but…”

“Yeah, she comes on a little strong sometimes when she’s drunk. You should try talking to her another time, when she’s sober. She’s actually really cool people. Maybe you’d like her.”

“Sure,” Victor agreed, with no intention of ever following through on that.

In the other room the band finished the song they’d been playing and he heard Benji announce they were taking a break. A few minutes later Benji wandered up to them by the sink and got himself some water as well.

“Hey, you guys were so good tonight,” Feña said, giving Benji a friendly smile.

“Thanks,” Benji said.

“You were amazing,” Victor agreed, and Benji nodded, but didn’t really look at him. “How long’s your break? You wanna go sit down somewhere?”

Benji shrugged, and said quietly, “Yeah, all right. Nice seeing you here, Feña.”

Finding anywhere to go and be alone for a minute was extremely difficult, but eventually they found a small office upstairs which was miraculously unoccupied, and closed the door behind themselves. It wouldn’t lock, unfortunately, but it was as good as they were getting.

“Hey, you really were unbelievable tonight,” Victor said, reaching out for Benji’s hand. Benji didn’t pull away but he didn’t squeeze back or thread his fingers through Victor’s the way he usually did.

“Thanks.” His voice was strained as he said, “I was pretty surprised when you showed up here.”

“I, uh, kinda snuck out of the house with Pilar. Our parents are at some New Years party, so as long as we don’t stay here too long we should be able to get home before them.”

“Oh, cool.”

“Um… Is everything okay? You seem kind of upset,” Victor said. “Look, if it’s about that girl that was flirting with me, I really wasn’t interested in her. I mean, you know that she’s not exactly my type.”

Benji sighed. “I know. I’m sorry for being weird. It’s not like I was worried that you were gonna do anything with her or whatever…”

Victor frowned. “What is it then?”

“It’s just…” Benji trailed off, looking frustrated. “It just really sucked seeing her touch you and flirt with you like that in front of everyone, okay? It’s hard seeing that and knowing that some random girl can do it but I can’t.”

“Oh.”

Victor didn’t even know what to say to that. It made him feel terrible, knowing that Benji was hurting because of him, because Victor was too scared to be out yet. Because Victor kept asking Benji to hide and lie for him.

“I’m so sorry, Benji. I never meant to hurt you.”

“It’s not really your fault. You shouldn’t have to apologize for not being ready to come out yet,” Benji said. He dragged a hand through his hair, a conflicted look on his face. “I don’t want to put any pressure on you. You know that. It can just be really painful at times, keeping this thing a secret. I’m trying so hard to be patient and supportive because I really care about you, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt when some girl gets to fawn all over you and I can’t even hold your hand.”

“It – it hurts me, too,” Victor admitted. “I hate hiding this just as much. I wish I was as brave as you are. I wish I could tell everyone about us, so I could hold your hand or kiss you whenever I want to. I’m just – I’m not quite ready yet.”

“I know, and that’s okay. I said I would wait for you and I will,” Benji promised.

Victor drew him in close, and Benji came, looking up at him at last. He imagined what would it be like to find Benji at school or in the middle of some party and be able to kiss him without caring about who was watching them. The very thought of it left him a little breathless with fear and desire. He wanted that so much. He just didn’t know how long it would take him to get there.

“Lately, I keep feeling like I might be ready. Like, I’ll be with my family and I’ll just think to myself that I could do it right then. Just open my mouth and tell them. But then I remember the things my dad has said and done recently, and I think about what might happen when they find out, and I just can’t do it. I get too scared. The thing is, though, I’m getting so tired of feeling that way. Sometimes I feel like I’m more angry than scared, that my fear is slowly changing into frustration at having to spend another day lying just to keep all of them happy. It’s all for _them_ – the hiding, the pretending to be someone I’m not – none of that is really for me. And I just want to do something for myself. I want a chance to be happy now.”

Benji stared back at him, nodding like he understood exactly what Victor was saying.

Wrapping his arms around Benji’s waist, Victor kissed him. “I think I’m almost there,” he whispered. “I think I’ll be ready soon.”

The look in Benji’s eyes was both hesitant and hopeful. “I’m serious about not putting any pressure on you, Victor. You can’t do this for me. Even if I get hurt sometimes because we have to hide, I’m still the one making the choice to be with you anyway. That’s my decision. When you come out, it has to be for you. You have to do it for yourself.”

“I know,” Victor said, and then he kissed Benji again, slow and a little sad, wishing that he could give Benji some comfort through the act, wishing that he could take away all of the pain he’d caused him just with the touch of his hands against Benji’s back, with the press of his mouth to Benji’s. Benji’s arms came up to rest around Victor’s neck as he kissed Victor back, and they both got lost in the moment.

There was a sudden burst of noise, and Victor opened his eyes to see someone standing in the doorway, staring at them in shock.

“Holy shit,” Jeremy said, looking back at Victor with a completely stunned expression that quickly transformed into something dark and disgusted. “I guess I was right. You _are_ a queer now.”

Benji quickly dropped his hands to his sides, stepping away from Victor and toward Jeremy. “It’s not what it looked like,” Benji started to say, but Jeremy just laughed snidely.

“Really? ‘Cause it looked pretty fucking gay in here to me.”

“Okay, listen,” Benji said placatingly, clearly trying to find some way to stop the situation from spiraling out of control, “could we just talk to you about this for a second?”

“There’s nothing to talk about. You’re both a couple of fags, end of story. I got it,” Jeremy snapped. He crossed his arms over his chest, blocking the doorway with his tall frame.

Victor felt numb, like this entire exchange was happening in a movie he was watching, like he wasn’t even really in the room with them. Distantly he thought his hands might be trembling, with fear maybe or anger. It was hard to tell which emotion would emerge stronger when this strange numbness faded and the reality of what had just happened sank in.

The way Benji was speaking sounded almost calm, but there was no missing the underlying current of panic underneath. “Look, you can’t tell anyone. Please. It’s not your secret to tell, okay? If you have any shred of decency in you, you will keep this to yourself.”

A flash of hatred contorted Jeremy’s face as he stared at Benji, so intense it was shocking. “I don’t have to do fuck all. If Victor didn’t want people finding out he’s a faggot, maybe he shouldn’t have been sticking his tongue down your throat in a house full of people.”

“Jeremy, please-” Benji pleaded, but Jeremy just shook his head and turned away from them, disappearing at a rapid pace down the hallway. “Fuck!” Benji swore loudly, bringing a shaking hand up to his hair. He looked over at Victor with concern. “Victor, I’m so sorry this happened. We will find some way to get through this, okay? Whether he tells people or not, whatever happens, I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

Just like that reality came rushing back into focus. Victor’s biggest secret, the one thing that was going to change his life more than any other, was now in Jeremy’s hands. Jeremy, who hated him. Who had always disliked him for some reason that Victor had never understood. There was no way Jeremy wouldn’t use this to hurt him.

Victor was suddenly propelled into motion, racing toward the door and down the hallway, stumbling and pushing past people on the stairs, and then trying to desperately find Jeremy’s tall, dark form in the crowd. He could hear Benji struggling to catch up with him, but he was so focused on just finding Jeremy as soon as possible that he couldn’t think about anything else. He didn’t even know what he was going to do when he finally found Jeremy, he just knew he had to get to him immediately.

People were giving him annoyed looks as he barged through one crowded room after another, one guy even grabbing Victor’s arm after Victor bumped into him. The guy shouted at him, looking like he might go as far as throwing a punch, but Victor just twisted away quickly and hurried on, and then finally he saw him, heading out the front door and into the darkness beyond.

Victor ran out of the house, catching up with Jeremy just as he was unlocking the door of a car. “Wait!” Victor called out, rushing up to him. He paused just in front of Jeremy, breathing hard more from panic than exertion, and before he knew what he was doing he’d put his hands on Jeremy’s shoulders to stop him from trying to run away again and pressed him into the side of the car. Jeremy flinched, one arm flying up to protect his face, and froze like that, as if he was just waiting for Victor to hit him. As angry as he was, Victor couldn’t help feeling shocked by this reaction, and he let go of Jeremy quickly, taking a step back.

“Sorry,” Victor mumbled. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that. Just, please, you have to keep this a secret. My – my parents don’t know about me, and if they find out, they might do something awful. They might kick me out or something, I don’t know. So please, please don’t tell anyone.”

Jeremy met Victor eyes with a furious intensity. It seemed like Jeremy’s whole wiry body was trembling just as hard as Victor’s, like he was having just as much trouble drawing in breath. “So, what, you risked all of that, possibly being kicked out and everything, for – for _him_? Why the hell would you do that?”

Swallowing hard, Victor tried to find a way to explain, even though he hated that he had to resort to begging this person who had never been anything but nasty to him just to save himself. “Because I really care about Benji. A lot. And I’m going to tell everyone about me eventually, I just need to do it myself. On my own terms. So please, Jeremy, don’t take that away from me.”

“Fine then,” Jeremy said, in a cold, bitter voice. “Tell them. When we go back to school next week, tell everyone that you’re gay. ‘Cause if you don’t, I will.”


	26. The Only Thing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: homophobia, homophobic slurs (including the "f" word), internalized homophobia, mention of violence/hate crime, description of a serious mental illness
> 
> Yet again, some very heavy topics in this chapter, so please check the warnings above before reading.
> 
> The chapter title comes from the song of the same name by Sufjan Stevens (warning: the lyrics of this song include references to suicidal ideation and self-destructive behavior).
> 
> Also, this fic will definitely not be finishing at 30 chapters. It's more likely to be about 40, but I'm still working it out as I go. I'll update my estimated final chapter count soon.

“Are you sure this is the right house?” Victor asked, as he pulled the truck over to a stop along a flat stretch of country road. There was a long, dirt driveway leading up to a split level ranch style house with a large barn behind it, and acres of land spread out on all sides. Benji was sitting beside him, one hand on Victor’s knee for support, and Felix was on Benji’s other side. Felix double checked something on his phone and nodded.

“Yep, this is the right location, according to the address Alicia sent me. So unless she got it wrong this should be the place,” Felix confirmed. “Are you sure you want to go by yourself? It might be better if we came and helped you. Maybe a little peer pressure would do the trick.”

“Or the threat of violence,” Benji muttered. Victor shot him a surprised look, and Benji said, “Look, you know I don’t actually condone violence. But maybe we could just _threaten_ him a bit.”

“I’m just going to assume you’re joking right now, because I’m pretty sure you’re too nice a guy to ever really do that,” Victor told him.

Benji sighed. “I’m, like, ninety percent joking.”

Sitting in the car and staring over at the large house, Victor was starting to get nervous. It had seemed like the only option, but now that he was here, he wasn’t sure that seeking Jeremy out and begging him yet again to not ruin Victor’s life was really going to work. But what other options did he have? Let Jeremy bully him into coming out to everyone at school on Monday? Or just sit back and do nothing while Jeremy outed him?

“It’s fine, guys,” Victor said, steeling himself. “It’s better if I talk to him alone. I think I have a better chance of convincing him that way than if we all gang up on him.”

“I’m fine with the ganging up on him option, just for the record,” Felix said.

Benji nodded. “Same. But you should do what you think is best. If you do need our help, we’re here, okay? Just text me and I’ll come in there and threaten that kid like he’s never been threatened before in his life.”

Walking down the long driveway, Victor ran through some things in his head that he could say when he saw Jeremy. Each one sound more pathetic than the last. He honestly had no idea how he was going to convince a guy that clearly hated his guts and was a huge homophobe to respect Victor’s choice to come out in his own time. Before he knew it, he was standing there at the front door, his hand shaking a little as it reached out to press the doorbell.

It was answered a minute later by a thin girl with the same dark hair and pale skin as Jeremy. She narrowed her eyes at Victor in confusion. “Yes?”

“Hi, I’m Victor. I’m a friend of Jeremy’s from school. Is he here?”

She frowned even more at that, looking Victor up and down suspiciously. Victor was guessing that Jeremy didn’t get a lot of people coming over to visit him. “He’s out in the barn right now. You can go find him if you want.”

“Thanks.”

Victor walked around to the barn, which was easily twice as big as the one at his own house, and more dimly lit inside. One half of it contained a pen full of cattle that regarded Victor quietly as he entered, and on the other side was an assortment of farm equipment and feed supplies, a large, mud-flecked John Deere tractor, and some tables covered in tools. It was hard to see at first as his eyes adjusted slowly to the gloom, but finally he caught a movement over by one of the tables. The tall, thin figure with hair so dark it was nearly black was immediately recognizable as Jeremy. He was busy working on something, hunched over the table with a pair of wire cutters in his hand, and as Victor came closer he realized Jeremy was repairing a long tangle of fencing.

“Hey,” Victor called out as he approached, and Jeremy whipped around, staring at Victor in shock.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Victor’s heart was in his throat. This was it. He had to give it his best shot. “I need to talk to you. About what happened on New Year’s Eve.”

Jeremy’s jaw clenched tightly. “I thought we already figured that out. Just tell everyone, or I’ll do it for you. It’s pretty fucking simple.”

“Yeah, except that it’s not really that simple,” Victor said, forcing himself to stay calm despite the frantic pace of his pulse. He walked up a little closer, coming to stand just a couple of feet away from Jeremy, who was watching him warily. “I’ve been struggling for awhile now with figuring out who I am. It’s been really hard for me. I haven’t told many people about me yet because I’m scared of how my parents are going to react when they find out. They’re pretty religious, and like I said the other night, they might kick me out or something, or-”

Jeremy cut in, saying, “Why are you telling me all of this? You think I care about your little sob story? You’ve been pretending all this time to be something you’re not. To be this perfect guy that everybody loves, the basketball star, the guy that gets the hottest girl at school and wins Homecoming King. But the truth is that none of that is really you, is it? Apparently the real you is some dick-loving fag that can’t even keep it in his pants at a crowded party. It could have been anyone that walked in on you guys the other night. The whole school could have already found out about you by now. But instead I’m giving you what you want. The chance to tell them all yourself.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Victor said, in a low, tense voice. It was so hard not to feel as full of hate for Jeremy as Jeremy seemed to be for him. “You’re not really giving me a choice at all. Whether you tell everyone on Monday or I do, _you’re_ forcing that to happen. It’s not what I want.”

“Well maybe you don’t get what you want this time, Victor!” Jeremy shouted, eyes wide and lips curling back with anger. The wire cutters Jeremy was holding slammed hard into the twisted coil of fencing material laid out on the wooden surface of the table as Jeremy brought his hand down with a loud bang. The sudden violence of the movement startled Victor, made him jump slightly. “I _hate_ liars like you, who think they can just get whatever they want if they know the right thing to say. You think people like me ever get what they want? You think _you_ _r_ life is so fucking hard?”

It took Victor a moment to notice the bloom of red that was spreading quickly over Jeremy’s pale skin. “You’re bleeding,” he said.

Jeremy glanced down and gaped in surprise at the blood pooling on the table. He lifted his hand up to take a closer look at the wound. “Fuck,” he hissed out as blood began to run down his wrist.

Glancing around, Victor couldn’t really find anything nearby that could be used to put pressure on the cut. He was wearing a flannel shirt over a t-shirt, so he took that off and quickly pressed the material against Jeremy’s palm.

“Do you have a first aid kit out here? Pretty sure that’s just gonna keep bleeding until we bandage it up with something,” Victor said. “Fencing wire can cut really deep if you’re not careful with it.”

Nodding toward a cabinet in the corner, Jeremy said, “There should be one in there.”

Victor left Jeremy standing there and went to find it. It took some digging around but he did eventually find one, and when he opened it up there were some packages of gauze and medical tape. Jeremy sucked in a sharp breath when Victor pulled the flannel away and used some of the gauze to mop up the blood that immediately welled up. The cut was fairly deep toward one end, near Jeremy’s thumb, where the wire must have dug in the hardest. Victor took Jeremy’s hand in his own, ignoring the way that Jeremy seemed to flinch at his touch, and carefully cleaned the cut with an anti-septic wipe and then covered it in gauze. Jeremy kept shooting him these little glances every few seconds that Victor wasn’t sure how to interpret. He had a feeling Jeremy was getting freaked out by the fact that a gay guy was touching him, and it made Victor want to just walk away and leave Jeremy there to deal with his injury on his own.

“Hold that,” Victor instructed him, and Jeremy pressed down on the gauze covering the wound. Victor took Jeremy’s injured hand carefully in his own so he could begin to wind the tape around it, and when Jeremy flinched again, Victor found himself snapping, “Just hold still. I’ll stop touching you in a second.”

Jeremy was breathing fast, probably from anger or homophobic panic or whatever, Victor didn’t care, but he held still at least until Victor had finished putting the tape in place.

Victor let go of him quickly. “There. All finished. You’re welcome.”

“Thanks,” Jeremy muttered. He was holding his injured right hand in his left, and now he wasn’t looking at Victor at all. They were both quiet for a long moment before Jeremy asked, “Why did you help me?”

“What?” Victor asked with surprise. “Did you think I was just gonna leave you here bleeding?”

Jeremy shrugged. “Well, why wouldn’t you? You hate me, right? You’re pissed that I know your dirty little secret.”

Even though it was kind of true, Victor found himself saying, “No, I don’t. I mean, I am pissed off at you. What you’re doing is completely fucked up. But hate’s a little strong.”

“Oh,” Jeremy said, sneering, “so you just don’t give a shit about me. Got it.”

Victor frowned at him. “Did I do something to you? Did I upset you or, like, offend you in some way? Why have you always hated me so much?”

Lip curling, Jeremy said, “Hate’s a little strong.”

Victor just glared back at Jeremy and waited.

Finally Jeremy sighed loudly and said, “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters a hell of a lot to me right now,” Victor pushed. “Since you apparently have some kind of vendetta against me, and now you’re trying to force me to out myself to everyone, even though I’ve tried to beg you not to, and I’ve tried to explain to you why I can’t come out yet. So what is it? What did I do?”

“Nothing,” Jeremy muttered. He waved his injured hand around. “Look, you’ve said what you wanted to say, you patched up my cut, so I think we’re done here now. Feel free to get the fuck out.”

Despite its size, the cavernous walls of the barn were drawing in tight at the same time that all the air was squeezed out of Victor’s lungs. He could feel himself getting more desperate the more dismissive Jeremy became. If Victor couldn’t convince him now, it was all over. This thing that was so big and life changing, this thing that was supposed to be _his_ and no one else’s, was slipping out of his grasp with every passing moment. “This could ruin my life, Jeremy. Do you get that? Do you have any idea what it’s like to be scared of your own parents? To have to worry that if they find out who you are they’ll hate you? That they’ll send you off to some fucked up Bible camp to cure gay kids, or kick you out of the house, or never speak to you again? This isn’t just some game to me!”

A long silence followed, while Jeremy drew in shuddering breaths, and looked like he was struggling to hold himself together. Victor had no idea what was going through Jeremy’s mind, didn’t really care, just as long as somehow Victor’s words got through to him and stopped him from destroying everything. Jeremy finally glanced up, looking straight into Victor’s eyes, with so much fear and desperation that Victor felt suddenly wrong-footed, like he’d misjudged the entire situation, like _Jeremy_ _was the one that was the most scared_ , not Victor.

In the space of a heartbeat Jeremy surged forward, crashing into Victor hard, his hands on Victor’s shoulders as he shoved him backward. Victor was slammed into a table, the hard wood digging into his spine, and the force of the collision upended a container full of nails all over the ground with a loud clatter. Jeremy snarled and yanked Victor to the side, so Victor grabbed his arms to try to keep his balance, and then they were grappling for control, smashing into the wall, a support beam, the table again which shuddered under their weight.

Jeremy’s foot slid on the pile of nails and suddenly they were crashing down together, hard enough to knock all the air out of Victor’s chest, and his skull connected painfully with the concrete floor. Jeremy kept shaking him violently with handfuls of Victor’s t-shirt, trying to slam Victor’s head into the floor again, so Victor struggled to shove Jeremy off of him and away. As skinny as Jeremy was, it should have been easy to dislodge him, but he was holding on so tightly that Victor could barely move him. And then, before Victor even knew what was happening, Jeremy was tugging him forward instead and kissing him roughly. It felt like another attack at first, all teeth and tongue and anger, Jeremy’s hands curling like claws into Victor’s upper arms, sure to leave bruises, and the second Victor got over his initial shock he gathered all of his strength and pushed Jeremy hard.

Jeremy fell backward and then lay there, panting and wild-eyed next to Victor, who scrambled to sit up and get away from him. He wiped the back of his hand against his mouth as he stared over at Jeremy. Had that really just happened? Had Jeremy actually just _kissed him_?

Sitting up fast, Jeremy reached a hand out to Victor in a desperate gesture, like he was begging for something, but Victor knocked it away hard. He wasn’t sure what Jeremy wanted from him just then, whether it was to hurt him or kiss him again, but he didn’t really care.

“Don’t touch me,” Victor bit out, and Jeremy winced.

“Victor-” he started, the name rough with panic.

“Is that what it was all about then?” Victor asked him. There was a kind of buzzing sensation all through his body, like brushing up against an electric fence, that felt like it would hurt once the adrenaline wore off. “All this time, you were a dick to me because you – you – what? You secretly wanted me? What is _wrong_ with you?”

It wasn’t like Victor couldn’t understand the feeling of hating himself for not being what other people wanted him to be. He got it. He really did. And he understood what it was like to feel consumed by shame and self-disgust and all of those awful, heavy emotions that weighed him down at times like an anchor tied to his neck. But he’d never let any of that become a hatred of _other_ people. He’d never once called anyone else a homophobic slur or cracked a gay joke just to fit in better with the other guys, or made the object of his attraction feel like he was despised. He couldn’t even imagine feeling so much self-contempt that he let it spill over into pretending to hate someone he cared for, someone like Benji.

“This,” Jeremy said, gesturing between himself and Victor, his eyes dark with every poisonous feeling that Victor had ever been worn down by. “ _This_ is what’s wrong with me. _You’re_ what’s wrong with me, what you make me feel – _I can’t be like this_. You think your parents will kick you out for being a fag? Well if my dad ever catches me with a guy again he won’t bother. He’ll just fucking kill me himself.”

Jeremy let out a bark of laughter, ugly and broken sounding. “He already tried it once.”

“What are you talking about?” Victor said, his voice too loud in the silence that followed Jeremy’s confession. Victor’s mind felt blank. It was too much to process all at once; he couldn’t quite make sense of what Jeremy had said. Couldn’t understand how a father could ever try to do something like that to his own son.

Jeremy raised his chin, a hint of defiance in his face mingling with the self-hatred that was so evident in his words. “Last year. My dad came home from work early and caught me with this other guy from school. Don’t bother asking who it was, he’d never admit to any of it. So my dad just started beating the shit out of both of us, until that guy freaked out and ran off and just left me there. Alone. That’s when my dad really started in on me, hitting me again and again and again… Pretty sure he wouldn’t have stopped at all if my stepmom hadn’t come home and pulled him off me. I didn’t go to school for two weeks after that. I couldn’t go back until the bruises had faded. People might have asked too many questions otherwise.”

“Jesus,” Victor breathed, feeling like Jeremy’s story had torn him apart inside, left him a mangled, painful mess of sorrow. Just the thought of what had happened to Jeremy made him feel like throwing up. “Did you ever tell anyone? Or try to get help or anything?”

“Do you even know who my dad is?” Jeremy asked incredulously. “He’s the fucking chief of police, Victor. Who the hell am I going to talk to?”

Victor shook his head. It was too awful to wrap his mind around. “But you can’t just keep living with him. Not after what he did to you.”

“I’m sixteen,” Jeremy said, shrugging and staring down at the floor. He looked exhausted, apathetic. The same way he had looked nearly everyday at lunch, full of negativity and spite, only coming to life when there was something to complain about or someone to put down. Victor had never stopped to wonder before why Jeremy was the way he was. Jeremy’s chin jutted out stubbornly as he said, “I just have to survive two more years. That’s it. Two more years of dating random girls to convince my dad that he successfully beat all the gay out of me. Then I can go to college and never come back here again.”

“He could hurt you again before that, Jeremy. It’s not safe.”

Jeremy stared hard at him. “There’s nothing else I can do. Look, I won’t tell anyone about you, okay? I only said I would because I was – I was really fucking jealous. When I saw you with _him_ , all I wanted was to hurt both of you as much as you were hurting me. But you don’t have to freak out about it anymore, I’ll keep my mouth shut, and you’ll do the same. Right?”

“Yeah. Of course,” Victor agreed. “I would never tell anyone about you. But just promise me that you’ll at least think about talking to someone?”

“What do you care? Why should you give a shit about me after what I was going to do to you?”

There was nothing but bitterness in Jeremy’s words and in the downward curve of his mouth, his high, tense shoulders, his eyes glaring down at the dirty concrete floor. It was a hard lesson to learn, but Victor couldn’t unlearn it now, with it right there before him: that shame could rot a person from the inside out, could fill them up with self-loathing and vitriol, until it seeped out and poisoned anyone who came too close. He realized then that he never wanted to be like Jeremy, not even a little bit, and that in order to avoid it he’d have to root out all of the insidious fragments of doubt and disgust and hate that grew like weeds with their thorns directed inward, to pierce and tear and rip him up from within.

It hurt to even look at Jeremy, a kind of second-hand pain, that even watered down as it was felt unbearable. He didn’t know how Jeremy could stand it. How he could go through life each day feeling like he did.

“I do care,” Victor insisted, firmly enough that Jeremy looked up and met his gaze with surprise. “No one deserves to suffer the way you have. One of my friends told me that, as cheesy and cliché as it is, things get better, and he was right. I’m not completely okay with who I am, I’m still trying to learn to like myself, but it gets a little easier everyday once you actually start trying. It’s just being willing to try that matters most.”

Jeremy didn’t say anything in response to that, but he didn’t make fun of it or try to undermine Victor’s attempt to help with some cutting remark. He simply sat there and stared pensively forward, and Victor hoped that somehow, against the odds, his words would find their way past Jeremy’s walls and actually reach him.

Victor climbed into the truck, sat down in the driver’s seat, and then just rested his forehead against his arms on top of the steering wheel. He knew Felix and Benji were staring at him in concern, and he should explain what had happened to them, but he just needed a minute of peace.

“Is everything okay?” Benji asked after a long moment had passed, voice soft and careful, his hand coming to touch Victor’s back. Victor drew in a deep, calming breath and leaned back into it, picked his head up and let Benji’s arm wrap warmly around his shoulders. He hesitated for just a second, aware that Felix had never really seen Victor and Benji together like this, but the moment of doubt passed quickly, and he wrapped his own arms around Benji and pulled him into a hug.

He thought about the ways in which desire could transform when it was tangled up with shame, until it became something ugly and contorted, like Jeremy’s feelings for Victor, or how it had spoiled that first experience of closeness he’d had with Benji. But when that shame was weeded out and extracted, the desire became something else entirely, a source of strength and nourishment, a cure instead of a poison. Something like what Victor was feeling now in Benji’s embrace, something so good that it could wash away the remnants of toxic hurt inside him, that could restore him and build him up stronger than he’d been before.

Victor pulled away finally, and told them, “Jeremy’s not going to say anything about me.”

Felix and Benji exchanged a surprised glance.

“Are you sure?” Benji asked.

Victor nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure.” He fastened his seatbelt, started the engine. “We’d better get going, before my parents get suspicious.”

They’d told Isabel and Armando that Victor was taking Felix to visit his mom, since Victor was still grounded for the next four days. By some miracle, even though they left the party later than they’d promised Felix they would, Pilar and Victor still made it home before their parents did, and didn’t actually get caught sneaking out. Their parents didn’t even notice when Pilar, who was pretty hungover, drank three cups of coffee and spent a lot of time in the bathroom the following morning. After the party, Victor had spent the following two days panicking over what to do about Jeremy’s threat to out him, to the point where he was basically a nervous wreck the entire weekend, and not being able to leave the house or see Benji in person had not made that any easier.

“So, are you going to tell us how you managed to convince him?” Felix asked, as they drove back toward town in order to drop Benji off at home.

Victor didn’t even know how to begin to explain what happened between him and Jeremy, and some of it didn’t feel like it was his to tell. “I… I just talked with him and explained my situation. He was a dick at first, like usual, but then… well, he told me some stuff, about himself. And eventually he agreed not to say anything, and I believe him. We’re definitely not friends or anything now, but I think we at least understand each other better.”

When they got to Benji’s house, Victor got out of the truck and walked up with him to the front door. “Hey,” he said, nodding at the swinging bench seat out front. “Can we sit and talk for a second? There’s something else I need to tell you, that I couldn’t say in front of Felix.”

Benji nodded and they sat down together in the shade of the magnolia tree, the bench rocking slightly beneath their weight. It was a warmer day than usual, but still cold now that Victor’s flannel shirt had been abandoned in Jeremy’s barn, covered in blood, leaving Victor in just a t-shirt. He couldn’t resist leaning into Benji’s warmth a little when Benji’s arm came to rest along the back of the seat behind him.

“What’s up?” Benji asked.

“When I was talking to Jeremy, things got pretty intense, and he started pushing me and knocked me down,” Victor began, and then put a hand on Benji’s arm when it looked like he was about to freak out. “I’m fine. I probably have some bruises, but I’m okay. The point is, he kept pushing and shaking me, and then the next thing I knew he, uh… he kissed me.”

Benji’s mouth dropped open in surprise. “What?”

“I stopped it right away,” Victor said, to reassure him. “Trust me, I do not have any romantic feelings for Jeremy. Like, at all. But he – um, he admitted to having feelings for me.”

“Wow.” Benji seemed totally floored by this. “Okay.”

Victor looked at him closely, trying to gauge Benji’s reaction to this information. “You’re not angry?”

Benji’s frown seemed more confused than upset. “No. I mean, I am angry with Jeremy for a lot of reasons, but I’m not, like, jealous or whatever. I believe you when you say you’re not interested in him. I just don’t really get it. I mean, I barely know him at all, but that first day I sat with you guys at lunch and the other night at the party, he just seemed like such a homophobic prick. It’s pretty hard to imagine him having a secret crush on you after that.”

“Well, the thing is…” Victor trailed off, trying to figure out how much he could say. It was all so personal and Victor understood better than most people why it was important to respect someone else’s privacy, but this was different. Jeremy was in genuine danger. He said, “The thing is, Jeremy’s home situation is seriously fucked up. He told me that when his dad caught him with another guy last year, his dad beat him up really badly. Jeremy thinks his dad would have even tried to kill him if his stepmom hadn’t come home.”

“Oh my god,” Benji gasped, horrified.

“Yeah.” Victor remembered the apathy with which Jeremy had talked about just trying to survive the next two years of his life and felt cold all over. “But he feels like he can’t tell anyone about it or ask for help because his dad’s the chief of police in Brandon.”

“Victor, that’s beyond fucked up. That’s insane.” Benji looked just as shaken by the revelation as Victor felt. “I think this isn’t really the kind of thing we can just ignore. We have to try to do something to help him.”

“I don’t know… I mean, I want to do something, too, but what?”

“I’m not really sure,” Benji admitted. “This is really serious, though. We need to think about it carefully, make sure that whatever we do it’s the right thing. Maybe we should go to the school counselor, or talk to a teacher or someone… Let’s think about it and figure something out.”

“Okay,” Victor agreed.

Victor did take Felix to visit his mom again after leaving Benji’s house. She was actually awake and pretty lucid when they arrived, compared with the other times that Victor had gone with Felix to see her. She was still gaunt and pale, and the anti-depressants she was taking made her sleepy, but she was doing much better than before. Victor stayed in the room with them for awhile, making small talk about school and his family, and it was obvious that all three of them were trying to pretend that nothing was out of the ordinary about the situation.

After a bit Victor went to get himself a coffee from the hospital Starbucks and gave them some time alone. He went out to wait in his car, and about forty five minutes later Felix came out to join him, stony faced and quiet.

“My Aunt Cathy’s coming on Tuesday,” Felix said, somewhat abruptly, as Victor began driving back to his house. “It took her awhile to make some arrangements for her dog I guess, but a friend is going to take care of him while she’s down here. She works remotely so apparently it’s not a big deal for her to just stay as long as she needs to.”

“That’s great, Felix.”

“Yeah.” Felix was quiet again for a while.

“Does… does anyone else know about your house?” Victor asked carefully. “I mean, about all that stuff she’s been…”

“Hoarding?” Felix asked, finishing the sentence. Victor nodded, a little guilty about the word he’d been about to let slip. Felix faked a smile. “I personally like to think of it less as hoarding, and more as enthusiastically collecting.” He sighed. “But aside from you guys and I guess the people at the hospital, the only other person who knows about it is Lake. She stopped by one day and surprised me, and she ended up finding out. I figured that would finally scare her away for good, but… Guess she’s still willing to put up with me after all.”

Victor rolled his eyes a bit at that. “Oh come on, Felix, she’s crazy about you. I didn’t like the way she treated you at first, but after your big romantic moment in the cafeteria I’ve changed my mind about her. And since you guys have gotten together, you’ve been so happy it’s kind of gross.”

“ _I’m gross?_ Have you seen yourself when you text Benji? That little smile you get is so sweet it could give me cavities.”

“Whatever,” Victor said, blushing a little and choosing to ignore that comment. He continued, more seriously, “But what about your aunt? Does she know what to expect when she gets here? With the house and your mom’s health and everything?”

“Yeah. She knows. I had to tell Diane the social worker about it, since she already kind of knew anyway, and I’m sure that she told my aunt.”

Victor hesitated, unsure if it was okay to ask, but decided he should at least try. “Do you need any help, uh, cleaning up or anything before your aunt gets here?”

The nervous way Felix’s fingers were nervously twisting a button on the cuff of his jacket sleeve was the only indication of how tense he clearly was when he answered, in a too-casual tone, “No, thanks. The um… the psychiatrist at the hospital said it was better not to move more than absolutely necessary to make things safe and reasonably comfortable for us. I guess messing around with all of mom’s stuff before she’s ready to deal with it can be upsetting, and we have to avoid making anything worse for her right now.”

“Oh. Okay, that makes sense I guess.”

They both fell into silence for a few minutes after that, not the comfortable kind that Victor was so used to sharing with Felix, but a silence that was heavy with the weight of all that Felix had to bear.

Desperate to find some comforting thing to say, Victor spoke up. “Look, I know you must be super worried about your mom and what’s going to happen next, but maybe it’ll work out okay. You’ll have some more support at home from your aunt and hopefully your mom can get the help that she needs.”

Felix chewed his bottom lip anxiously, his foot tapping a fast rhythm against the floor. “But what if the help she needs means taking her away somewhere? Or they declare her unfit to be my guardian and end up taking _me_ away? We’re all we have, you know? It’s always just been me and her. I barely even know Aunt Cathy. I’ve met her, like, twice in my entire life. I don’t know what I’d do if they separated us, made me go live with Cathy in Philadelphia or put me in the foster care system or whatever.”

Victor couldn’t imagine life without Felix next door, as close to him as a brother, the two of them always there for each other. He hoped that what Felix was worrying about were just remote, distant possibilities, worst case scenarios that would never really happen. He’d been so sure for so long that his family would move, that he’d have to say goodbye to everyone, and in the end it hadn’t happened. Maybe it wouldn’t happen for Felix either.

Later that night, Victor sat in the semi-darkness, just a lamp on his nightstand casting a faint golden glow around his bed, and wrote a message to Simon. On the floor nearby, Felix was asleep on the air mattress.

_Hi Simon,_

_So I went over to Jeremy’s house today and talked to him. He_ _wouldn’t listen_ _to me at first, and_ _he_ _kept saying he was still going to out me,_ _so_ _we_ _kind of_ _got into a fight. And then he kissed me. It turns out he’s gay and he has feelings for me, which is apparently why he’s been so awful to me for so long. I guess that he hated feeling that way so much that it_ _somehow_ _turned into acting like he hated me._

 _In the end he promised not to say anything, especially not now that I know his secret, too. So I don’t have to worry_ _anymore_ _about being outed to the whole school, like you were, which is good._

 _But I think I learned something from what happened today about how destructive shame can be and I realized that I can’t let myself be like that anymore. Not even a little bit. I want to just dig it all out of me and throw it away, so that I don’t end up hurting myself and other people the way I have in the past, the way Jeremy hurt me._ _I actually decided to take Benji and Justin’s advice and sign up for therapy. My first session is next week, and I’m pretty nervous about it, but I’_ _m going to give it a try_ _._

 _The kind of ironic thing is that right before Jeremy walked in on me and Benji at the party, I had just told Benji that I’ve been thinking a lot lately about coming out, and I feel like I might be ready soon. There’s still so much that I’m worried about, like what my parents will do, bu_ _t I feel like I’m getting stronger and stronger everyday. I think pretty soon I’ll be strong enough to deal with whatever the consequences are, and I won’t have to be afraid anymore. I really am almost there now._

_Love Victor_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for all the angst you guys!! I promise the next chapter will be a lot lighter


	27. What Happens in Texarkana...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: brief mentions of homophobia and internalized homophobia, brief mention of/implied threat of violence

A lot happened that first week back to school after the winter break. On Monday Armando headed out for his first day at his new job, looking more cheerful that morning than he had been in weeks, possibly even months. Victor had just smiled tightly and said nothing when his father had clapped him on the shoulder and thanked him for making coffee before leaving the house. Things were still strained between them, even though Armando had been trying to reach out to Victor more often since that night at the hospital when he’d apologized. The problem was that Armando had no idea how badly he’d hurt Victor, or knew any of the complicated reasons Victor had for still feeling angry with him, and so Armando kept trying to bridge the distance between them and Victor kept pushing him away again. He could see that each time it happened it hurt Armando’s feelings, which made Victor feel shitty despite how pissed he still was, and the whole cycle was just tense and painful for both of them.

He ran into Jeremy at school that day, too, when he was leaving the locker room after P. E. They’d stared at each other awkwardly in the hallway for just a moment before Jeremy’s pale skin flushed and he hurried past Victor without a word. Part of Victor was still so pissed off by what Jeremy had tried to do to him, and by the way Jeremy had allowed his attraction to Victor to become something so hurtful for such a long time, and that part of him wanted nothing to do with Jeremy. But at the same time he couldn’t forget the hollow, apathetic way Jeremy had talked about just trying to get through the next two years _alive_ , and that part of Victor was tempted to follow after Jeremy and check to see if he was okay. In the end, Jeremy was long gone by the time Victor had turned to look for him, and so Victor just walked away to his next class.

When he was working on homework at his desk that night, he got a reply from Simon to his previous message. It said:

_Victor,_

_I am so sorry about what happened with you and Jeremy. I know how scared you were the last few days, and I’m really relieved to hear that he’s not going to out you after all. The fact that he even threatened to do it in the first place is unbelievably awful._

_My mom is a child psychologist, and so obviously I grew up in a very pro-therapy house, but I can see how doing it for the first time would be a little intimidating. I am so glad you’re willing to give it a try, though._ _I think you’ll find it really helpful._

 _You’re right, you really are getting stronger all the time, Victor, and it’s pretty amazing to be here on the sidelines rooting for you as you get better and better. You’ve come such a long ways just since we started talking, and that was only four months ago_ _(can you believe that??)_ _. I think it’s amazing that you feel like you might be ready to come out to your family soon._

 _I have to admit, I am a little worried about you, though. Growing up the way I did, I never imagined that anything bad would happen to me when I came out, other than a little awkwardness may_ _be, and I was right. My family accepted me right away_ _. Bram’s family were pretty accepting of him, too. But I’ve met other people since then, people like Justin, who weren’t so lucky. And from what you’ve said to me, I worry a bit that you might end up being one of the unlucky ones._

 _I’m not saying this to scare you._ _Trust me, I am totally in your corner, supporting your choice to come out 100%, wishing for nothing but the best for you. And_ _I believe that you are strong enough to deal with the consequences of coming out,_ _whatever they might be_ _. I guess I just want to suggest that before you do it, you make a plan, just in case – god forbid – one of those worst case scenarios actually happens. If you get kicked out or you don’t feel safe at home anymore, do you have somewhere to go? Please make sure that you do before you take this_ _big_ _step_ _forward_ _._

 _B_ _ecause_ _here’s the thing about the truth – you can’t control how people will react to it. All you can do is be honest with the people that you love. The rest is up to them._

_Whatever happens, you’ll always have me._

_Love Simon_

Simon’s message stayed in Victor’s head for a long time, his words popping up sometimes when Victor was eating dinner with his family or when they were watching TV together. He couldn’t help sneaking little glances at his parents’ faces and wondering what they would do when he told them. Wondering if they really _were_ capable of one of those worst case scenarios. Now that he was beginning to feel like he was coming closer to finally saying the words out loud, the possibilities felt far more real and intimidating. What _would_ he do if they made him leave? Where would he even go?

Simon was right, as difficult as it was, it was something that he actually had to consider and plan for, in case it turned out that their love for him just wasn’t enough.

On Tuesday Felix’s Aunt Cathy arrived in Brandon, so Felix moved back into his house with her. His mom was discharged from the hospital that same afternoon and joined them at home, where Felix and Cathy would be able to look after her. Before he left the Salazar house, Victor made Felix promise to actually keep him updated this time on how things were really going, and he made a silent promise to himself to try and be a better, more attentive friend in the future. Although Felix continued to be more withdrawn than usual that week, he slowly seemed to get better, maybe because of the help he was getting from his aunt, or because his mom was finally home again, or maybe because Lake was back from her vacation. Whatever it was, Victor was relieved to see Felix start to relax a little and smile more often again.

Victor’s first therapy appointment was on Wednesday after basketball practice, and he’d been so nervous about it that he’d almost asked Benji to come to the clinic with him for moral support, but it turned out that Benji had to work then, and so Victor had had to summon up the courage to do it on his own.

Despite his fears about bearing his soul to a complete stranger, it ended up being surprisingly nice and not nearly as terrifying as he’d been expecting. The therapist was an older man named Dr. Novotny, but he insisted on Victor calling him Jake. He was probably in his late forties or fifties, tall and thin with kind of a Professor Lupin vibe going on. He was a little bit soft-spoken but had a tendency to say something unexpectedly funny at times, and Victor found himself feeling immediately at ease around him.

For whatever reason, Victor had been imagining that his therapist would be a woman, so he was kind of surprised when he ended up with Jake. But by the end of that first session, he was glad that it was a guy. They talked a lot about Victor’s confusion over his sexuality and his struggle to deal with internalized homophobia recently, and there were some things related to sex that Victor didn’t think he would feel as comfortable talking to a woman about.

They also spent quite a while on Victor’s family situation and his desire to come out soon, and Jake had helped him work out a plan for doing it safely and provided him with some resources in case of an emergency. Even though Victor was hoping he would never need any of them, he felt much better knowing they were there. Jake reminded him that choosing not to come out until he was older and more independent was also an option, especially if he was feeling unsafe for any reason.

During their hour and a half long appointment, Victor had done most of the talking while Jake listened, took notes, and asked questions. Toward the end, he’d spoken up, and said some things that had really made Victor think.

“Based on what you’ve told me so far, Victor, I’m starting to notice a pattern,” Jake had said. “It seems like when you feel overwhelmed by your emotions, you tend to run away from them. What do you think about that? Would you agree with it?”

“Yeah,” Victor had said, although it made him feel kind of shitty admitting to it, like he was weak or something, too much of a coward to face the problems in his life.

But then Jake had continued, explaining, “Wanting to run away from something that you find really scary or upsetting is a pretty normal reaction, but the problem is that it tends to make the thing we’re running from get worse. The next time you’re feeling that way, try to remind yourself that it’s okay to be afraid at times. Accept the fact that you’re feeling scared or overwhelmed and that it’s fine. Then try to ask yourself _why_ you’re feeling that way. Is it a rational fear? If it isn’t, maybe you can let go of it. And if it is, remember that fear can be useful sometimes; it can alert you to a potential danger or problem in your life. In that case, try to take that energy that’s making you want to run away and channel it into holding your ground, finding for a solution.”

Looking back on the last few months of his life, and even farther back as well, Victor could see that he had wasted so much time trying to escape from everything that he’d been too afraid to deal with. In some of those cases, it had been the escaping itself that had caused the most damage, even more than the underlying problem, like in his attempt to run away from his own sexuality by dating Mia.

“One other thing,” Jake had said, after giving his previous comment a moment to sink in. “Those feelings of internalized homophobia and shame that you brought up – that’s another thing where the first step to dealing with it is just acknowledging what you’re feeling. Unfortunately, it’s a very common problem with young people in the LGBTQ community because the society that we live in is constantly bombarding us with these messages that we have to be straight or cisgender in order to be accepted and loved. But that’s what I want you to think about, the next time you feel like that. Those messages are often coming from somewhere external, from the people we know, the media, the government or religious institutions in our lives, rather than from ourselves. So when you feel shame or fear related to your sexuality, ask yourself: does this feeling really come from _me_? Or is it how I think _other_ _people_ would feel about me?”

Victor left the clinic that day feeling so much lighter than when he’d arrived, a huge weight that he hadn’t even realized he’d been carrying lifted off his shoulders. He found himself thinking about what Jake had said a lot over the next few days, especially at times when those little voices in his head were loudest, when they told him not to do or say a certain thing, to feel a certain way, because it was too gay, because it wasn’t what other people expected, because it was gross or pathetic or not masculine enough. He hadn’t realized just how often he was changing his behavior to conform to those voices until he actively started paying attention to it, and then it was surprisingly satisfying to rebel against it every once in a while, in some small way, like when his last pen ran out of ink and he bought a new set of pink ones. Every time he pulled one of them out during class to take notes, he would look down at it and feel a sense of subversive pleasure, like it was his subtle way of telling society with all its exhausting demands and expectations to go screw itself.

Even though Victor was tired after the long week, he was seriously dreading Saturday. He was going to have to work an opening shift with Sarah, who was high-strung and not nearly as much fun to spend six hours with as Benji, and then after that he was supposed to go to his Abuelo Tito’s seventieth birthday party. Despite the utter disaster that had been Thanksgiving, they were all going, Isabel included, and it would be the first time since that day that they would see the extended Salazar family. It would no doubt be insanely awkward and tense and Victor was dreading it with every fiber of his being.

When Victor walked up to the counter in Brasstown Saturday morning, he was temporarily struck speechless by the sight of Benji fiddling around with the espresso machine and a screwdriver, wearing a pair of jeans and an extremely form-fitting white tank top.

“Oh, hey,” Benji said, when he turned and found Victor standing there staring at him. He seemed to notice Victor’s glazed over expression and an amused smile spread across his lips.

“Hi,” Victor said, in a higher pitch than usual. He cleared his throat. “I didn’t think you were working today.”

“I wasn’t. I had every intention of sleeping in this morning, but then Sarah called me in to deal with this thing. I used to be pretty good at fixing the one at our Atlanta location whenever it was having issues.”

Sarah stepped out of the backroom just then, talking loudly into her cell phone. She ended the call a minute later, giving Benji a frustrated look.

“Well? Any luck?” she asked him.

Benji shook his head. “Still not working for me.”

“I just called around to all the shops in the DFW area, and nobody has the right part. Apparently the only place that does have it in stock is all the way up in Texarkana.” She stopped speaking a mile a minute to let out a huge sigh of frustration. Putting her hands on her hips, she looked over at Benji and said, “Okay. You and I will go take care of this, and Victor can man the cafe while we’re gone.”

Benji shot Victor a panicked look, no doubt horror-struck by the thought of spending the entire day trapped with an even more stressed out than usual Sarah. Benji hurried to say, “What if Victor and I went instead? It doesn’t really make sense for both the manager _and_ assistant manager to go. One of us should stay here to deal with the situation, right? And besides, this thing weighs a ton, it might be better if I have Victor’s help moving it.”

Sarah narrowed her eyes. “The feminist in me is offended right now, but the woman who actively avoids any type of weight-training equipment at the gym recognizes that you may have a point there.”

“Wait, how long does it even take to drive up there?” Victor asked. “It’s just that I’m supposed to go to my grandpa’s birthday party tonight.”

“It’s about a three hour drive each way,” Sarah said. “It’s a little after eight o’clock now, so if you guys leave right away, you could get there by eleven, and then assuming it only takes an hour or two to put in the new part, you could be back by three or four. Is that going to work for you?”

Victor glanced uncertainly at Benji, who was definitely giving him some major puppy dog eyes, and found himself caving. His parents would be pissed if he missed the birthday party, but it didn’t even start until five, so they should have enough time. Plus, the thought of spending the day hanging out with Benji was very appealing. Much more appealing than being stuck at the cafe, somehow trying to make orders without an espresso machine.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Victor said. “I can do it.”

It turned out that Benji had not been exaggerating when he said the machine weighed a ton. It was a genuine struggle to get it out of the cafe, through the parking lot, and then into the back of the truck. The fact that Benji’s bare arms were flexing in an incredibly distracting way had really not helped at all. Honestly, it was a miracle that Victor didn’t drop the thing on one of their feet. But eventually they got it in there and strapped it down with bungee cords, plugged the location of the Texarkana repair shop into Google maps, and were finally on their way.

“God, I love road trips,” Benji said, once they’d managed to get past the extremely stressful Dallas area traffic and out onto a much quieter stretch of freeway headed east. It was one of those weird Texas days where the weather was unseasonably warm and sunny despite still being the middle of winter, so they both had their windows cracked slightly, and the combination of fresh air, music, and Benji’s company were putting Victor in a very good mood (even though Benji covering up his arms with a long-sleeve shirt had dampened his spirits for a bit). This was so much better than how he thought he would be spending his morning.

“Does your family do road trips much?” Victor asked him. “I mean, aside from the ones to Dollywood that you told me about.”

“Sometimes. We used to go camping a lot in the summer, or drive to the beach or wherever. I always wanted to do a really long one though, like all the way along one of the coasts, or up to Canada maybe. There’s just something really cool about traveling like that, seeing how the landscape changes, how people are living in different places along the way. It’s kind of more satisfying than when you just hop on and off a plane, with no idea what was in between one place and another.”

“That’s really cool,” Victor said. “I think it’d be fun to do that someday. To just pick a place and figure out some way of getting there.”

Benji smiled at him, eyes lit up in the bright morning light. “I’d love to do that with you one day. Just the two of us.”

Victor reached over and covered Benji’s hand with his own. “Yeah, me, too. Where would you wanna go? If you could go anywhere?”

“Well,” Benji said, grinning, “We’d obviously have to go to Dollywood first. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen it.”

“Obviously,” Victor agreed, grinning back at him.

“And after that… I don’t know. Maybe we could drive up to this lake in the Blue Ridge Mountains where I went camping one time with my family. I don’t remember the name of it anymore, but it was so gorgeous there. There weren’t a lot of other people, ‘cause the road out to it was kind of a trek, but it’s totally worth it. The water was so clear you could see every little pebble and stone under the surface.”

“That sounds amazing.”

“What about you? Where would you wanna go?”

Victor only had to think about it for a second before he said, “New York.”

“As in, New York City?”

“Yeah. I mean, that’s where Simon and Bram are going to school.”

“Oh, yeah. It’d be pretty cool to meet them in person,” Benji said.

“It’s not just that. It’s… It’s that whole world that Simon told me about. Like, his apartment with Bram and all of their cool roommates, and the bar with the drag show in their neighborhood, and Greenwich Village, and all of it.” It felt strange to sit there in the daylight, with blue skies overhead and Benji’s fingers still interlaced with his, and remember how it had felt to be so broken and alone that night he’d first admitted to himself that he was gay. How he’d lain there in the darkness and listened to Simon talk about New York like it was a lifeline, like it was the only way to pull through to the morning. “I’ve never seen anything like that, you know? You’re still one of the only gay people I’ve ever met in person. It’s hard to imagine what it would be like to go somewhere that I’m not, like, the minority for once. Somewhere where everyone is like me.”

Benji squeezed his hand and said, “Yeah, I definitely get that.”

“Sometimes being gay just feels like… like this really lonely thing. I mean, I have you, and Simon, and I’m so grateful for that, but for most of my life I’ve just felt so different from everyone around me. In some ways, I’m kind of used to that feeling, ‘cause I’m not white, so I know what it’s like to be different. But this – being gay – it’s even more isolating than that. At least I can look around at my family and see that we all share the same brown eyes and skin, the same dark hair. We speak the same languages.”

“But this is something that separates you from them,” Benji said, finishing Victor’s thought. “Yeah, I know. It can definitely be hard to feel like you’re always on the outside, even with your own family.”

“Exactly. For once I want to be somewhere where I feel like I’m on the inside. Like I belong.”

There was a look in Benji’s eyes that was a little hard to interpret, like sadness mixed with warmth, like wistfulness maybe. “You’ll find that eventually, Victor. I’m sorry that you’ve had to feel so alone for such a long time, but things are changing now. _You’re_ changing. You found me. You found Simon. And someday you’ll find a place like that where you don’t feel like you’re on the outside anymore. You might not see it, but you’re already on the way to that place right now. Just coming out to yourself, that was taking the first step toward it.”

The old man that ran the repair shop in Texarkana was tall but stooped, shuffling around with his cane at the speed of cold molasses and somehow managing to talk even slower than he moved.

“This could take me a while,” he said, after removing the casing from the back of the machine and squinting inside of it for about ten minutes. “These European ones, they’re a lot like my wife at the train station. They like to take their time. If you try to rush them they just get ornery and start demanding soup with a toasted bread bowl and all kinds of nonsense before they’ll even think about gettin’ goin’ again.”

“Okay…” Victor said, getting a bad feeling about all of this. “But you can finish it this afternoon, right?”

“Oh sure, if everything goes well,” the man said. “Just depends on how things are holdin’ up in here.” He tapped the side of the machine. “Gotta go get my special tools and then I’ll be back in a jiffy to get started on her.”

As the man hobbled away to the back of his shop, Benji shot Victor an apologetic glance. “I’m sorry, maybe making you come out here with me was a bad idea.”

Despite the knot of worry in his chest, Victor sighed and said, “It’s fine. We’re here now, so let’s just hope this guy is faster than he looks.”

“All right. Well, we’ve got some time to kill, so let’s get some lunch.”

Since the weather was so nice, they ended up getting some take out from a Mexican _t_ _aqueria_ with the plan to eat outside somewhere. The owners of the shop were friendly and chatted with Victor in Spanish about things he and Benji could do while passing the time in Texarkana that afternoon, including suggesting Spring Lake Park as a nice place to eat and walk around a bit. Benji was excited to practice his Spanish and very nearly managed to place his order without any errors, until he said that he wanted his tacos _“sin cabello”_ rather than _“sin cebolla”_ , leading to an extremely affronted reaction from the woman behind the counter which Victor hurried to smooth over.

“Oh my god, that was so embarrassing,” Benji groaned, as they walked out of the shop in the direction of the park, which was apparently only a few blocks away.

With a comforting hand on his shoulder, Victor said, “If it makes you feel any better, it’s not as bad as the time my Uncle Dave told everyone he was _‘muy embara_ _z_ _ada’_ about burning the hamburgers at the family Fourth of July party a couple years ago. My _tios_ are still cracking jokes about that one to this day.”

Benji laughed. “Okay, yeah, that does make me feel a little better.”

They found a picnic table by a pond where they could sit and eat, and were quickly swarmed by a bunch of ducks begging for food. Victor started breaking off little bits of his taco shell and tossing them into the crowd.

“Stop it, you can’t give them people food,” Benji exclaimed, putting a hand over Victor’s to prevent him from throwing anything else.

“But they’re obviously hungry. Look at them.”

“Human food isn’t good for them. It’s why most parks put up signs telling people not to give them bread crumbs and stuff, ‘cause it fills them up and doesn’t have any of the nutrients in it that they would normally be getting from their natural diet.”

Victor blinked at him in surprise. “You seem weirdly passionate about this.”

Benji took his hand away, looking a little embarrassed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to lecture you or whatever.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s good to know about that, it’s not like I want them to get sick or anything,” Victor said, watching the ducks waddle sadly away to the pond now that the free food had stopped coming. “I had no idea you were such a big animal lover.”

“Oh, yeah, I can be kinda crazy about it sometimes. Actually, there was this one time when I was a kid, that I found out a supermarket was going to be built in the field in my neighborhood where a family of raccoons were living, so I convinced a bunch of my friends to make a picket line with me in protest.”

“Did it actually work?” Victor asked, staring at Benji in amazement and trying hard not to laugh. “Did you guys stop the supermarket from being built?”

Benji rolled his eyes. “Are you kidding? Of course not. I really tried my best for those raccoons, but we were a bunch of nine year olds with homemade construction paper and magic marker signs glued onto cardboard. I don’t think anyone even knew what we were standing around on the sidewalk trying to do.”

“I bet you looked totally adorable though,” Victor teased him, leaning into Benji’s shoulder. The thought of a tiny Benji getting worked up over animal rights was making his heart do funny things in his chest. They’d both finished eating, so he reached down and grabbed Benji’s hand, too full of warmth and affection at that moment to worry about the fact that they were in public. “Come on, let’s check out this park a little bit before we have to go.”

They wandered over to a trail around a large lake and Victor called the repair guy to check in. He said he wasn’t quite done yet and that he’d call Victor back as soon as he was finished. So they spent a long time walking around, Victor holding Benji’s hand every now and then when he felt brave enough, and eventually they ran into a set of docks along the lakeside with boat and canoe rentals. Benji handed over some cash to the guy at the stall and somehow talked Victor into climbing aboard one of the ridiculous swan-shaped paddle-boats with him.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Victor said, laughing and struggling to peddle hard enough to get the huge, ungainly thing moving through the water.

Despite the fact that Benji was pushing just as hard against the peddles with his feet, they were still barely inching forward. “I was _not_ expecting it to be this much work. Holy crap, maybe I should start going to those spinning classes at the gym. I’m starting to worry I’m not in as good of shape as I thought I was.”

Victor looked him up and down quickly, his cheeks feeling warm as he said, “I really don’t think you have to worry about that…”

“Oh yeah?” Benji grinned and stared back at Victor in a way that made heat pool low in his belly. “You either, Mr. Basketball Star.”

“But seriously, though,” Victor said, desperately changing the topic before the tension between them got any thicker while they were out in the middle of a public park. “How can it be this difficult? I’m almost out of breath already and we’ve only been going for, like, five minutes. Isn’t this supposed to be one of those cute, relaxing things you see people do in romantic comedies?”

“Watch a lot of romantic comedies, do you?” Benji asked teasingly as they gradually steered the swan boat over toward a small island in the middle of the lake. It was covered in weeping willow trees that dragged their long branches over the sparkling surface of the water. As lovely as it was Victor was having a hard time appreciating it when he was busy working up a sweat peddling so hard.

“Uh…” Victor said, caught out, and Benji laughed.

“Wait, really? Okay, that’s pretty cute.”

“It’s just, like, this thing me and my mom do sometimes,” Victor admitted. “We act like we’re just watching them so that we can make fun of the stupid plot devices and whatever, but maybe we both secretly kind of like them.”

Benji had that look in his eye that he got whenever Victor was being both charming and nerdy. “All right, name your favorite rom com. Go.”

Victor bit his lip, shooting Benji a quick look to see if he was being made fun of, but Benji was just looking back at him expectantly. “Um. My Best Friend’s Wedding.”

“Wow,” Benji said, laughing. “You are _so gay_ , Victor, I can’t believe I didn’t realize it sooner.”

Victor couldn’t exactly argue with that.

By the time they’d done a loop around the little island and returned to the dock, they were both a bit sweaty and winded, and had to go chill out on a bench for a few minutes. Victor took a look at his phone and nearly freaked out when he saw the time. “Shit, it’s after three o’clock already. I’m definitely going to be late for the party now.”

He called the repair guy again just to check in and got the same answer as before, so next he called up his mom to explain where he was and that he wouldn’t be able to make it to the party on time. Although she chewed him out at first for driving all the way to Texarkana without asking permission, she was a lot more understanding than he’d been expecting about the party, just telling him to do his best to make it back as early as he could.

They found a food cart nearby and bought some coffees, then continued walking around the lake trail. Hanging out and talking with Benji was so much fun that he kept forgetting he was supposed to be worrying about leaving soon. They were in the middle of an argument about which Julia Roberts movies were the best when Benji got a phone call.

“Hi,” Benji said, taking the call. “Yeah, we made it here like an hour ago and it’s at the shop now. I don’t know how much longer. All right, Sarah, stop yelling at me. We’ll check in again with him in a minute, but if it’s not done, it’s not done. I don’t know what you want me to do about that.” Benji was starting to sound pretty annoyed. Victor could hear Sarah speaking rapidly on the other end, loud enough that Benji was holding his phone slightly away from his ear. “Look, would you just do a Headspace and calm down? We will get it back to you as soon as we can.”

He ended the call with an exasperated sigh, stuffing his phone back in his pocket. “That was Sarah,” he said, unnecessarily. “Uh, don’t freak out, but she said that if it’s not done today we should just stay at a motel and bring it back first thing tomorrow.”

Victor’s heart started pounding at Benji saying the words “stay the night” and “motel”. “We would stay here?”

“Don’t worry, I know you have to get back for your grandpa’s party,” Benji said reassuringly. “Let’s just head back to the shop and light a fire under his ass.”

“Yeah, okay.”

They were walking back to the truck when Victor’s phone started to buzz with an incoming call as well, and when he answered it, the old man from the repair shop greeted him.

“She’s all set,” he said, “you boys are good to go.”

“It’s ready?” Victor confirmed, in surprise. Benji shot him a relieved smile.

“Yep, just come on down and pick her up. It’s Wally’s Repair Shop, down by the thrift store on seventh. You remember how to get here?”

“Mmhm,” Victor said, “thanks. We’ll be right there.”

“So it’s finished?” Benji asked, and Victor nodded. “That’s great. Maybe you can still catch a bit of the party after all.”

Suddenly the possibility of rushing all the way back to Brandon, just to spend like an hour or two at his Abuelo Tito’s party, was sounding really unpleasant. It would no doubt be unbelievably awkward after how awful Thanksgiving had been, and they’d just gotten permission from Sarah to stay the night if they needed to, and on top of all of that the idea of a motel room alone with Benji was now stuck right at the forefront of his mind, making it hard to think about anything else.

His mom hadn’t even sounded all that upset when he’d called her earlier, so maybe it wouldn’t be a big deal if he missed the party after all. They couldn’t exactly punish him for something related to his work, could they?

Victor stopped and looked over at Benji, who stared back at him curiously. “What if we… _didn’t_ go back today?” Victor asked him.

Benji blinked in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

He twisted the heat sleeve on the coffee cup in his hands nervously. “I mean, uh… we could just say that the machine wasn’t done yet, and, like… stay the night here.”

“Are you serious right now? You want us to lie to Sarah _and_ your family so we can hang out here tonight?”

Victor chewed on his bottom lip. When Benji put it that way, it did sound kind of bad, but… “Look, it’s after four o’clock. By the time we pick up the machine and start driving back, we won’t even get to Brasstown until about seven thirty, maybe even later with all the traffic around Dallas. The cafe closes at nine thirty, and my grandpa’s party will probably be done by, like, nine, so… yeah. I don’t know, maybe it’s not worth rushing back there just for that?”

“I don’t know, Victor…” Benji trailed off, looking torn.

Victor grabbed his hand. “It’s just that, the last two weeks I hardly got to spend any time with you. And everything has been so stressful lately, with my dad being such a homophobic jerk, and your brother not coming home, and then what happened with Jeremy, and Felix’s mom… Maybe we could both use a little break from all of that. A chance to just be _us_ for a while, away from all of that other bullshit.”

Benji took a deep breath, considering this, and for a second Victor was sure that Benji’s conscience was going to win out and he’d say no, but then to Victor’s surprise he nodded. “Yeah. Okay, let’s do it.”


	28. Night Go Slow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: internalized homophobia, use of a homophobic slur ("f" word), mild sexual content, discussion of alcoholism
> 
> The title of this chapter comes from the song of the same name by Catey Shaw.

After leaving the park, Victor and Benji picked up the espresso machine and then made some necessary phone calls to Sarah and their parents, letting everyone know that they wouldn’t be back in Brandon until the following morning. The lie they agreed on was that the machine would be finished around ten o’clock that evening, and rather than drive back in the dark, they were going to stay the night and leave early the next morning in order to make it back to Brasstown in time for opening. Sarah was the most upset by this news, but accepted it nevertheless, and Victor was once again surprised by how chill Isabel was when he told her.

“Work is work, honey, I get it,” she’d said. “And I think you’re making a good choice by coming home in the morning. I don’t want you driving around those Dallas area freeways at night. They’re already dangerous enough in the daylight with all of the construction going on.”

Once all of that was taken care of, they found a motel room online that was a reasonable price, and drove over to get checked in.

“Hi,” Victor said to the receptionist, showing her the reservation they’d made on his phone.

She typed something into her computer, and then said, “Oh, shoot, sweetie, that website you used double-booked us. It’s not the first time this has happened. We keep calling to complain to them about it and they just keep doing it, it’s driving me nuts.”

“So you don’t have a room for us?”

“Well, you reserved a room with two doubles, right?”

Victor nodded. That was what they had settled on after a very awkward conversation in the car, since they were going to have to give Sarah a receipt for the bill later, and trying to explain a room with a single bed to her would have resulted in Victor dying of embarrassment, plus it would have seemed incredibly unprofessional.

“Okay, I don’t have any more doubles available, but I do have one other room left if you want it. It’s a queen,” she explained.

“Like, just one bed?” Victor asked, his voice coming out in an embarrassingly high pitch. Next to him, Benji shot him a concerned look.

“Yes. Is that going to work for you?”

“It’s fine, Victor, we can just find another place-” Benji started to say, but then Victor jumped in and said, “We’ll take it.”

“We’ll keep the reservation the same, so you’ll be charged the same price that you would’ve gotten for the other room, even though this one is a bit bigger,” the lady said, and then handed over a couple of card keys.

“Are you sure about this?” Benji asked him, after they’d left the motel’s office and gone to check out their room. Victor’s mouth went a little dry when he saw it. There was just one big bed in the middle of the space, covered in white sheets and a striped blanket, with a table to one side and a large window on the other. “I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable or anything tonight…”

Victor’s heart was definitely racing, but not with fear the way it had been that night at Mia’s house. Instead he mostly felt a thrill of excitement running through him at the chance to spend some time alone with Benji away from all the distractions and drama of their usual life, and yeah, he was a little nervous about things possibly progressing with them physically, but he was relieved to discover that he wasn’t actually scared. Benji had been nothing but calm, and patient, and understanding when Victor had gotten freaked out before, so he felt like however far things went that evening, he didn’t have to be afraid because he trusted Benji and liked him so much. It also helped that he’d been taking Justin’s advice and figuring out some stuff on his own lately and learning more about how to deal with internalized homophobia from Jake.

“I’m not uncomfortable,” Victor told him, putting a hand on Benji’s hip and moving in close to him. “I’m… I’m actually really looking forward to this. To staying here with you.”

“Me, too,” Benji said quietly, and then he curled a hand around the back of Victor’s neck and pulled him down into a kiss. Victor automatically wrapped his arms around Benji’s waist, drawing him in even closer, and kissed him back enthusiastically, with an ease that still took him by surprise at times. It was hard to believe that it had only been about two months since the first time they’d kissed. Being with Benji felt so natural to him that it seemed like they’d been doing this for far longer than that.

Benji walked him backwards until Victor felt his back hit the wall, until he was trapped there between Benji’s strong arms in the best possible way. Benji’s lips were pressing kisses down the length of his neck, making Victor gasp every time his teeth grazed the sensitive skin there. Their mouths met again, Benji nipping at his bottom lip, the light, teasing touch not quite enough, so Victor brought a hand up to tangle in Benji’s soft hair and slipped his tongue past the seam of Benji’s mouth. The groan Benji let out as the kiss deepened went straight through Victor, igniting a heat inside him that felt like it would soon consume all of him.

Victor could have just happily stayed at the motel for the rest of night if his stomach hadn’t chosen that moment to rumble loudly.

“Was that you?” Benji asked, laughing as he pulled back a bit, his face flushed and lips wet and red. Victor cursed his body for needing to eat so regularly. Benji gently removed himself from Victor’s arms, smoothing down his hair and clothes as he caught his breath. The urge to just grab Benji and continue what they’d started was ridiculously hard to resist. “Maybe it’s best if we put this on hold and go get some food.”

As much as Victor hated to admit it, he was really hungry. Besides, although he really, really didn’t want to stop what they’d been doing, some part of him was still a little nervous about sharing this new experience with Benji, and he didn’t want to just rush into it and ruin it, so he reluctantly followed Benji out of the room.

In the truck a few minutes later, Benji pulled up a map of nearby restaurants. “What are you in the mood for? There’s Chinese, Thai, a couple of diners and sandwich shops, pizza… Oh, hey, there’s a local barbecue place that has good reviews. I still haven’t had that much Texas barbecue since I got here.”

“Really? Okay, let’s go then.”

The restaurant was very kitschy, with vinyl floral print table cloths in bright colors and big bouquets of sunflowers everywhere, and the walls were decorated with cowboy hats, longhorn skulls, and large photos of famous locations around Texas. One section of the room had been separated by wood railing to make a dance floor, with a mechanical bull in one corner and a bar that was crammed full of people already. The whole place was pretty crowded in fact, always a good sign, and they actually had to wait a few minutes before a table opened up for them. They were led to a spot by the window directly underneath a huge photograph of a cowboy riding a bucking horse, one hand in the air and the other gripping the reigns tight, his strong thighs straining against the denim encasing them. Benji took one look at it, glanced back at Victor in amusement, and had to bite his lip to stop from laughing.

“This is _quite_ the place,” Benji said, when the waitress had left them to look over the menu. He nodded up at the photo. “I’m not sure who I’ll find more distracting during dinner, you or him.”

Victor glanced quickly over his shoulder at the cowboy, and blushed a little as he muttered quietly, “Well, I think I know who’ll win that contest. He is pretty hot.”

“Okay, first of all, we just sat down, and you’re already winning,” Benji said, slowly dragging his gaze across Victor in a way that made him feel hot all over. “And secondly, I think that is the first time I’ve ever heard you say something like that.”

“What do you mean?” Victor asked, already feeling a bit nervous about the direction this conversation was headed in. He reminded himself of what Jake had told him at therapy on Wednesday, about questioning those little voices that were making him feel ashamed and embarrassed. He internally told the voices to kindly shut up and stop trying to ruin his evening with Benji.

Benji kept his voice low so the people around them wouldn’t overhear, but it was so noisy, and the country music blasting out of the speakers overhead was so loud, that he probably shouldn’t have bothered. “Well, you’ve complimented me before, but… aside from that, I don’t think I’ve ever heard you call another guy attractive.”

“Oh.” Victor was definitely struggling not to get anxious and flustered again. He took a long sip of his water.

“I have to admit, I am kind of curious,” Benji began, but just then the waitress returned.

“Are y’all ready to order?” she asked.

“Um, I don’t really know what I’m doing here,” Benji told Victor.

“You want me to pick some stuff?” Victor asked, and when Benji nodded, Victor flipped through the menu and requested a couple of brisket sandwiches that sounded good without being crazy expensive like some of the bigger dishes on the list. Once the waitress had gone, Victor said, “What were you going to say before? About being curious?”

Glancing around at the crowded restaurant, Benji shook his head. “Sorry. I was going to ask you something that you’d probably rather not talk about with all these people around.”

 _Shut up_ , Victor told the voices that were clamoring on about not bringing up gay stuff in public. They were hundreds of miles away from home in a completely different city, nearly a different state, and no one could probably even hear them over the sound of Shania Twain belting out a fast-paced Country-Western love song.

Victor looked Benji straight on and said, “It’s okay. Ask me. I, uh – I promise not to get freaked out.”

Benji nodded slowly, looking impressed. “Okay then. I was going to say – I’m a little curious about what kind of guys you like.”

His heart was starting to race, but Victor steadfastly ignored it, forcing himself to keep to his promise. “Um… to be honest, I don’t think I really know,” he confessed.

Frowning, Benji asked him, “How can you not know?”

“’Cause I’ve never really let myself think about it before. I mean, I know I like you,” Victor said and immediately felt that heat burn through him again. He took another drink of water to calm his nerves. “And, uh, there was another I guy I liked, before you moved to Brandon. But I never really had any other crushes before that. At least, I don’t think I did.”

“What was that other guy like?”

Victor twisted his napkin in his hands, unsure of what to say to that. He felt that old uncertainty come back, the worry he’d had when this thing between them had first started and he’d felt so ignorant about how dating a guy would work. He didn’t think you were supposed to talk about exes or former crushes with the person you were currently dating; wasn’t that weird? Or was it just girls that got upset about stuff like that? Or was Victor stereotyping now? He felt incredibly confused.

“You really want to hear about him? About some other guy I liked?”

“Yeah, I mean, that’s why I asked,” Benji pointed out, frowning. Then he seemed to figure out what was going on, and said, “Oh. Look, I’m not really the jealous type, Victor. We’re together now, and I trust you, so it’s not going to bother me if you talk about this other guy. You don’t still have feelings for him or something, do you?”

Honestly, Victor hadn’t even thought about Daniel in months, given how completely wrapped up in Benji he was. “No, I really don’t. You’re, uh… you’re the only person I like.”

Benji smiled broadly at that and said, “It’s all good then. Tell me about him.”

“Okay. Well. His name was Daniel, and I met him at Camp Lewis last summer. It’s, like, one of those outdoor camps for elementary school kids and we both worked there as counselors for about three weeks.” Victor paused, not really sure how to continue. This was the first time he’d ever told anyone about Daniel and it was hard not to feel a little shy about it, after such a long time keeping it a secret. Not to mention the fact that, even though he’d promised Benji he wouldn’t freak out, it was still difficult to talk about it in public. Despite all that, he was determined to start being braver about stuff like this, so he forced himself to continue. “He was really cool. Me and him became friends right away, since we were staying in the same cabin and his family’s Puerto Rican, too. And he’s into sports, so we also had that in common. He’s on the soccer team at his school.”

“So nothing ever happened with you guys?”

“No. There were some moments when I thought that maybe he felt the same way, but… I don’t know, it was probably just all in my head,” Victor said, and before he could elaborate further their sandwiches arrived. Each plate was loaded down with a massive pile of fries, a side of coleslaw, and a toasted bun filled with slow-cooked pulled brisket smothered in caramelized onions and barbecue sauce.

“Wow,” Benji said, closing his eyes in pleasure when he took his first bite. “This is amazing. Don’t get me wrong, Atlanta has some excellent barbecue, too, but…”

“It is definitely one of the perks of living in Texas.”

“Wait a minute,” Benji said a little while later when they were less distracted by the food, “are you saying that in your whole life, you’ve only ever had a crush on two people? And one of them is me? That is both extremely flattering and a little… unusual.”

“Maybe?” Victor was starting to fidget with his napkin again, slowly tearing one corner of it to shreds, and he forced himself to put it down and stop being such a spaz. He took a deep breath. No one was looking at them. No one could probably even hear them. “I don’t know. I guess if I’m really honest with myself, there might have been some other guys that I liked before Daniel, but when I was younger I didn’t really understand what I was feeling. I think I kept mixing up attraction and friendship, you know? Like, I’d meet a girl who was really cool and I’d think that since I wanted to hang out with her that must mean I had a crush on her, because that’s what everyone else was telling me it was. But then there were some guys that I probably liked as more than friends without realizing it at the time, because it never occurred to me that what I was feeling was actually a crush. I mean, it’s basically the same thing I did with you and Mia, except that I was more aware of what I was doing by that point, of the fact that I was actively trying to run away from… from what I was feeling for you.”

A quiet, pensive moment passed between them, a hint of sadness in Benji’s eyes when they lingered on Victor’s. “It was tough seeing you with Mia last fall,” Benji said softly. “Even though I didn’t admit it to myself at first because I was still with Derek, I liked you from practically the first day we met. And once I figured out what I was feeling, I kept trying _not_ to feel that way. I kept telling myself that it was really stupid to fall for some straight guy who was never going to like me back, but then there’d be these moments when we were together and I thought you had to feel something for me, too.” The sadness faded away as he smiled, his hand sliding a little closer to Victor’s over the tabletop. “It’s nice to finally know that I was right about that, though.”

There were only a couple of inches separating their hands. Victor started to move his forward, wanting so badly to be brave enough to take hold of Benji’s, without caring who saw them, but just before he could make contact there was a loud burst of laughter from the table across from theirs. Victor jumped a little and looked over, taking in a group of middle-aged men who were talking so loudly they were nearly shouting, their table covered in empty beer bottles and plates of half-eaten appetizers. He felt himself shrinking back in his seat, his hand withdrawing before he’d even consciously decided to give up on holding Benji’s.

He’d been doing so well, talking about all of that stuff despite the fact that they were in a crowded restaurant, but suddenly it was too much. It felt like anyone could just look over at them and tell that they were more than friends, that they were – Jeremy’s words echoed loud in Victor’s mind again, as they’d been doing for days, ever since the house party – that they were a _“couple of fags”_. That sick feeling of shame began to creep up on him again, and Victor struggled to reach for the advice that Jake had given him, but for the life of him he couldn’t seem to remember the words anymore.

“I’m sorry,” Victor mumbled, staring down at the little pile of shredded napkin bits by his plate. He couldn’t make himself look at Benji just then; didn’t want to know if Benji would look back at him with hurt or disappointment. “I thought I was getting better, but…”

“Hey,” Benji said, a note of urgency in his voice. “Victor, stop it. You are getting better. It’s okay if there are times when you don’t feel comfortable being out in public. I mean, look at where we are.”

Victor did look up then, in surprise, and Benji gestured around them. “We’re in _Texas_ , which is not exactly known for being the most open-minded of places, and we’re at a cowboy-themed restaurant-slash-bar full of drunk straight guys who kinda look like the conservative types. Honestly, I’m a little nervous about us holding hands in here, too, okay?”

“Oh.”

It had never once occurred to Victor that Benji might ever feel anxious about being out in public, since Benji always seemed so confident and proud of who he was. But as Victor observed the people around them, the groups of men putting back beers and what appeared to be half a dozen couples on dates nearby, not a single same-sex couple that he could identify among them, he realized that Benji had a point.

“As much as it sucks, there are times when it’s safer or easier to just not be out,” Benji admitted. From the look on his face, the tension in his jaw, Victor had a feeling that Benji was remembering what had happened at Homecoming. “And there are times when it’s worth doing it anyway, but… I guess what I’m saying is you have to pick your battles, you know?”

Victor realized it was not unlike the racist crap he had to sometimes ignore just because it wasn’t always worth the trouble of fighting back every single time something came up. Because unfortunately fighting every battle would be too exhausting or too risky.

Benji laid his hand out on the table. “If you don’t feel like this is a safe place to be out, that’s okay. I get that. But if you want to hold my hand right now and tell any and all homophobes out there to go screw themselves, well, I’m here for that, too.”

All around them were people, laughing, talking, eating, drinking. There were the four middle-aged men in polo shirts across the aisle from them, probably coworkers, who were getting louder and louder as the evening went on. A man and woman in their twenties at a small table behind Victor and Benji, sharing a piece of pie. A family with two little girls who were busy drawing on their paper placemats with crayons while their parents seemed to be arguing about something. An older couple sipping margaritas and looking over the menu.

They were all just regular people, like him and Benji, each table its own little world. Would anyone even care if Victor held Benji’s hand? Maybe someone would. Maybe some asshole would shout at them or tell them not to be so open in public. But it was also possible that no one would even notice. The thing was, it might not matter to anyone else there, but it mattered to Victor, and even though Benji would accept whatever decision Victor made, it mattered to Benji, too.

Victor crossed those crucial inches separating them and touched the skin of Benji’s palm, wove his fingers together with Benji’s, and held on tight.

The low-hanging lamp over their table was bringing out the gold in Benji’s eyes, highlighting the perfect curves of his cheekbones and jaw, the long, straight line of his nose. His lips were turned up just a bit at the corners and Victor loved the shape of them, loved to watch the way they moved, loved looking at them almost as much as he loved kissing them. Benji’s hand in his was warm, his skin smooth except for those places where it was callused, but Victor loved those rough spots, too, loved the way they felt when they brushed against his own skin.

All those people around them continued to eat and talk and laugh, and the speakers overhead were blasting out some country song about a guy chasing after a hard-to-get girl, and from the dance floor there came a raucous cheer as someone climbed up onto the mechanical bull. If anyone was looking at them, or whispering something, or glaring, Victor didn’t even know, because all he could see was Benji staring back at him with his warm brown eyes and his mouth curved up in a smile.

Even though he had no frame of reference for it, Victor looked at him and thought, _this_ _must_ _be_ _what falling in love feels like_. Because what else could it be? He’d never felt anything like this before. Those crushes he may or may not have had, that unrequited attraction for Daniel, none of that compared to the way Benji could leave him breathless with wonder and desire.

Their waitress returned to the table and although her eyes widened a little bit in surprise, she didn’t seem bothered by their interlocked hands, and Victor held on tight despite the speeding up of his pulse.

“Is there anything else I can get for you boys?” she asked.

“Nope, we’re good,” Benji answered.

“All right then, I’ll leave the bill here.” She set it down and gave them a friendly smile. “By the way, if y’all are interested, we have free line dancing lessons starting up in about five minutes down on the dance floor. Y’all should stick around for it, it’s really fun.”

Victor looked over at Benji, who was biting his lip, his eyes practically glowing with excitement. Victor shook his head. “You wanna try it, don’t you.”

“I mean, _come on_ ,” Benji said, a challenge in his voice. “We _have_ to. It’ll be amazing.”

“How do you always talk me into these things?”

“I don’t know, I think you might have a soft spot for me or something,” Benji said with a wink. There was no point trying to argue with that.

Once they’d paid the bill, Benji looked Victor in the eye steadily and reached down to take hold of his hand again. Victor squeezed back, and that was all the reassurance Benji needed to tug Victor up to his feet and pull him over to the dance floor. There were several women standing at the front, all of them dressed in tight jeans and shirts with huge belts around their waists and cowboy hats perched on their heads. Victor and Benji joined the group of people lining up behind them.

“How y’all doin’ tonight?” one of the women said. She had long blond hair and a red plaid shirt on, her belt buckle shaped like the state of Texas and dotted with silver rhinestones. “I’m Carrie and I’ll be leading the lesson this evening. We’re gonna focus on two intermediate level dances, but for those of you who are beginners we’ll try and take things slow enough for you to keep up. All right, so our first dance is the Tush Push, which should be the easier of the two-”

Benji looked over at Victor, catching his eyes, and mouthed the words “tush push” disbelievingly. Victor had to cover his mouth to stifle his laughter.

“Okay, let’s get started. First, kick your right foot out and tap your heel on the floor-” Carrie began, and as she walked them through the steps of the dance the crowd of about fifteen or so people followed along. Victor did his best to keep up, and there were some twists and turns that left him feeling a little lost, but he did better than he was expecting. He definitely wasn’t as bad as some of the other beginners at least, some of whom were tripping over their feet and seemed in danger of knocking into the other dancers every few minutes.

Victor had always been pretty good at stuff like this, things like sports or horseback riding that involved moving his body with control and precision, but he had nothing on the natural talent Benji seemed to have for it. The middle part of the dance, which clearly gave it its name, involved rocking your hips one way and then the other followed by a kind of low, rolling movement, then twisting to the front, rock-stepping backward and forward, turning, rock-stepping again, more turning, and by that point Victor was dizzy and confused. Benji, however, looked like he’d been line dancing for years, never missing a step, the rhythmic motion of his body completely mesmerizing. It was a genuine struggle to keep his eyes on the teacher when Benji was right there next to him, rolling his hips the way he was.

“Looking good y’all!” Carrie said. “Let’s see if you can handle adding a little music to the mix.”

The first song wasn’t too bad, and Victor felt proud of himself for getting to the end of it without looking like a total idiot, but then Carrie started up a second, much faster-paced song as an extra challenge.

“Oh god,” Victor groaned, struggling to make his feet follow the instructions Carrie was shouting out.

Benji glanced over his shoulder at Victor without missing a beat and grinned. “I hope you’re not about to let a Georgia boy kick your ass at line dancing, V.”

“Pretty sure you could kick my ass at literally any kind of dancing,” Victor said, hopping a little as he tried to catch up after accidentally skipping a step.

“-right, left, right, rock, left, right, left, rock, now turn, and right, left, right and a three quarter turn to the back-” Carrie called out loudly over the sound of the music.

As Victor was attempting the three quarter turn he accidentally spun the wrong direction and ended up colliding with Benji, who caught him by the arms and saved him from an embarrassing crash landing on the floor. Victor was already a little breathless from the speed of the dance, but suddenly being right up in Benji’s space, chest to chest, had his head spinning for a different reason, had him feeling giddy at their closeness. Benji licked his lips, his eyes locked on Victor’s. The connection between them felt like an irresistible force.

The song ended and Carrie began to describe the next one she would be teaching. They stepped back a bit, Benji’s hands falling away from Victor’s arms, but their gaze never broke.

“Do you, uh… Do you wanna head back now?” Benji asked.

Victor swallowed hard, an electric current buzzing through every inch of his body. “What about the other dance?”

Benji shrugged, faux casual, but his eyes were bright. “Don’t get me wrong, the Sleazy Slide sounds like it’ll be a blast, but I think my line dancing needs have been fulfilled for the evening.”

“Are you sure?” Victor asked, laughing, “’cause I wouldn’t want to hold you back from experiencing everything the Sleazy Slide has to offer.”

With an amused shake of his head, Benji reached out and slowly laced their fingers together again, giving Victor plenty of time to pull away if he wanted to. He didn’t. Benji began to lead them off the dance floor and through the crowd toward the exit. “I’m a little more interested in experiencing some alone time with you tonight,” Benji said in a low voice as they stepped out into the cool night air. Despite the sudden chill, Benji’s words had Victor feeling like he was burning up inside.

When they got back to the quiet, dimly lit motel room, it was like an entirely different world from the heat and noise and bright lights of the restaurant. The door closed behind them, and for a moment Victor felt unsure of himself, despite the constant, magnetic pull that Benji’s presence had exerted over him the entire evening. It wasn’t fear holding him back from reaching out to touch Benji the way he wanted to so badly, but instead a sudden shyness, a doubt as to how to get from point A to point B. Earlier in the evening, when they’d last been in this room, it had felt so simple. He just wanted to jump right back into that moment, into that feeling of being completely caught up in Benji, into the unthinking, easy headiness of being so close to him.

Benji was watching him, a cautious look in his eyes. “We can take things as slow as you want to, Victor,” he said, and Victor realized that Benji had misinterpreted Victor’s hesitation as discomfort. “If you don’t want to do anything more than kiss, that’s fine. There’s no pressure.”

Shaking his head, Victor reached out and wrapped his fingers around Benji’s wrist, tugging him forward. Benji came easily, closer now, but still not as close as Victor needed. It hit Victor all at once just _how much_ he wanted Benji, how he had wanted him for so long and tried so hard not to feel it. In that moment it was impossible to believe that he’d ever been able to push this desire away.

He said, still feeling a little awkward, “No, it’s not that. I, uh – I want _more_. I just don’t really know what I’m doing…”

“Oh,” Benji said, eyes locked on Victor’s. His teeth dragged over his lower lip in that way they did, which Victor was learning meant that Benji wanted him, and the sight of it had his pulse racing. There was hardly any space left separating them now, so close that Victor could feel Benji’s breath on his own skin. Tilting his head up just slightly, Benji leaned forward that last fraction of an inch and brushed his mouth against Victor’s, maddeningly light. And just like that it was simple again, so natural to turn his head to meet the angle of Benji’s exactly right, to fit their mouths together, to get lost in the movement of their lips and teeth and tongue.

Whatever shyness he’d felt was gone instantly, forgotten in the moment between one kiss and the next. All he’d needed was that little bit of forward momentum and he was falling, fast and unhindered, nothing left to hold him back. Hands on Benji’s hips, unable to stop kissing him for even a second, Victor led him a few stumbling steps backward to the nearest surface, which turned out to be the small table, and he pushed up slightly as Benji lifted himself to sit on the edge of it. Victor pressed in close as Benji’s legs parted to make space for him. Every little sound Benji was making, every gasp and hitched breath, became a white hot energy that raced fast as lightning through his body. Every touch made him immediately crave another.

“You seem to be figuring it out pretty fast,” Benji murmured, the words spoken into the smallest of pauses between kisses. “For someone who claims they don’t know what they’re doing, you’re doing really great.”

Victor felt like he should respond to that in some way, maybe thank Benji for the compliment or think of something flirty to say back, but it would have required him to stop kissing Benji, and that just wasn’t something he was capable of doing at that moment. Instead he moved his lips over the hinge of Benji’s jaw, down his neck, seeking out the spots that earned him more of those breathy gasps, each one sending shivers down Victor’s spine.

He slipped his hand under the hem of Benji’s shirt, dragging his palm up the curve of his back, Benji’s skin wonderfully warm and smooth to the touch. It felt so good, but it wasn’t quite enough. Tugging a little clumsily on Benji’s shirt, he struggled to remove it, the buttons near the collar snagging on the necklace Benji was wearing, and then to his frustration Benji was pulling away, laughing a little at Victor’s impatience.

Victor felt embarrassed then by his lack of finesse, mumbling, “Sorry,” but Benji just quickly unlooped the chain from the button and then pulled his shirts off, tossing them away to some distant corner of the room. The one benefit of not kissing Benji right that second was that it gave him the opportunity to look at him, sitting there in just his jeans and boots, his hair falling messily around his eyes, his bare upper body so perfect that Victor wanted to memorize every line and angle of it. The silver chain around Benji’s neck shone brightly against the dip of his throat, draped beautifully over the curves of his collarbone. Lit up only by the single lamp in the room, Benji’s fair skin seemed to glow in the semi-darkness.

“God, you’re gorgeous,” Victor blurted out, and felt his cheeks get hot as he realized he’d just said it out loud. When Benji dragged him in for another kiss, Victor could feel the curl of Benji’s smile against his own lips.

“I wanna see you, too,” Benji said, pulling a little on Victor’s shirt. “Would you take this off?”

He hurried to comply, yanking the shirt over his head and tossing it away somewhere. For a second he felt self-conscious, standing there half naked while Benji just stared at him, but when Benji’s eyes eventually lifted to meet his again, they were dark with want, and it didn’t matter anymore if his body was perfect enough or not, not when Benji was looking at him like that.

The minute Victor had spent just standing there, letting Benji see him, had been far too long to go without kissing him, so Victor threaded his hands through the soft strands of Benji’s hair and pressed their mouths together again. It was slow, so slow and so good, the taste of Benji better than anything else he’d ever experienced. Victor just wanted to kiss him and kiss him and never stop, but after some indeterminate period of time Benji pulled away a little, only far enough to rest his forehead against Victor’s as he drew in a breath.

“Maybe we should, uh, take this over to the bed now?” Benji suggested. “If that’s okay?”

Victor waited for just a second to see if those feelings of fear or shame would make an appearance, but aside from maybe a little nervousness, he felt fine. Better than fine. He felt _amazing_ , because being with Benji was the most natural thing he’d ever done, because this thing they were sharing with each other tonight was so obviously good, and the last thing he wanted was for any of those horrible voices in his head to ruin it. They were all silent at the moment, and Victor didn’t know when they might return to taunt and hurt him, but he wanted to take the moment of peace and make the most of it.

With his heart so full of desire and affection, there was no room for anything else, no space left for anything dark or hurtful. Victor took Benji’s hand in his and pulled him over to the bed.

Even though they needed to leave at five a. m. the next morning in order to make it back in time for opening, and Victor would have to do all of the driving, he couldn’t make himself sleep for more than an hour or two that entire night. It was impossible to stay asleep for long, when he kept drifting awake to the feeling of smooth skin pressed against his, the warm weight of Benji’s arm across his chest, one of Benji’s legs tangled up with his own under the blankets. He couldn’t bring himself to stop touching him, his fingers drifting wonderingly over the wide expanse of Benji’s back and shoulders, up into the fine strands of his hair, shining golden in the lamplight.

Victor had been so afraid that at some point the pleasure would be spoiled by shame, but hours had passed by already and still those poisonous feelings had yet to come creeping back in. Maybe it was the support and advice he’d received recently that was holding them back, or maybe the awful lesson he’d learned that day he’d confronted Jeremy, which had led to an even greater determination to rid himself of any feelings that might lead him down a similar path. Or, more likely, it was just _Benji_ and the way he made Victor feel that held them all at bay.

At some point in the night Benji’s eyes fluttered open, so Victor welcomed him back to consciousness with a kiss. Benji’s lips parted under his, and the hand that was resting on Victor’s chest began to wander, stroking over the cage of his ribs and down across his stomach, leaving a trail of heat in its wake. Victor groaned as their kiss deepened, as Benji woke up more fully and began to lean into him, began to take him apart with his hands and his mouth all over again. Nothing had ever felt as good or as right as this, and Victor never wanted the night to end, never wanted to see the sun rising on the horizon, never wanted to leave this room.

He wished more than anything that this could be his whole life, just him and Benji together, no one else to hurt them or keep them apart or tell them they were wrong to feel this way about each other.

“How are you doing?” Benji asked later, lying on his side next to Victor with his head propped up by his hand. Victor’s own hand was resting on Benji’s hip, fingers tracing idle circles against the skin there. He had no idea anymore what time it was and didn’t really want to know. It felt like maybe the minutes would go by slower if he didn’t check.

“Good,” Victor said, punctuating the word with a kiss. “ _Really_ good.”

“So you don’t feel freaked out or anything this time?”

Victor shook his head. “No. I kept thinking maybe I would, but the only thing that’s freaking me out right now is the thought of ever getting out of this bed.”

Benji huffed out a little laugh, rolling over onto his back and stretching his arms up behind his head. Victor stared at the long, lean line of his body spread out over the sheets and felt that now familiar quickening of his pulse again. “Same,” Benji said. “I wish we could just stay here for the rest of the weekend.”

“Or maybe the rest of our lives,” Victor said, only half-joking.

“You’d get sick of me eventually,” Benji teased him, laughing when Victor kissed him again and promised, “Never.”

The room outside of the blankets was a bit cold, and Victor was feeling strangely shy about walking around naked despite everything they’d done that night, but eventually the need to pee overcame his embarrassment. Benji raised his brows at him in amusement when Victor rushed awkwardly to the bathroom, and Victor tried hard to ignore the feeling of his whole face heating up. On his way back to the bed a few minutes later, his eyes caught on Benji’s wallet lying on top of the table, his ID card visible through the vinyl pocket on the front. Benji’s birth date was a year earlier than Victor’s, reminding him of something that he’d been wondering about.

“Hey, um, can I ask you something?” Victor said once he was safely back beneath the covers. Benji was still looking at him with that fondly amused expression on his face, like he found Victor’s sudden shyness entertaining.

“Sure.”

“You’re seventeen, right? So how come you’re a sophomore like me?”

The warmth in Benji’s eyes faded a bit, replaced by uncertainty, and Victor found himself immediately regretting the question. Benji sat up a little in bed, leaning back against the headboard, his fingers twisting the material of the blanket that was pooled in his lap. “You know how I said that I was a mess before I came out? I really wasn’t exaggerating. Things got pretty bad for a while, mostly during my freshman year in Atlanta.

“So you told me before that you were confused for a long time, and didn’t figure out that you were gay until that night with Mia, right? Well, I think I kind of _always_ knew I was gay, even when I was a little kid. I remember playing the game of Life one time when I was at a friend’s house in, like, third grade, and you know how you have to put those little blue and pink people in your car as you drive around the board? Well, when I landed on the “Just Married” square I put another little blue guy in my car and everybody laughed at me and told me I couldn’t do that. And I just knew then, that I was different from those other kids and that it wasn’t okay. So I started trying hide it, especially at home, because I could see the way my dad was so proud of my brother, and I thought the only way to get him to love me like that was if I was just like Isaac. I tried for a while in middle school to get into sports and date girls and basically do everything Isaac was doing, but I hated all of it.

“At some point I just couldn’t keep it up anymore, and I gave up on all of that, and started getting into music instead. The guys in the band I joined were always inviting me out to parties and stuff, and everyone would get wasted every time we went out, and I started doing that, too. I did it just to fit in at first, but then it became more than that, it became a way of drowning out everything I didn’t like about myself because being numb was better than feeling the way I did the rest of the time.”

Benji took a deep, slow breath, like he needed the moment to steady himself, and Victor scooted in closer, taking one of Benji’s hands in his own. Eventually Benji continued. “So, freshman year. I was basically going out to parties every weekend and trying to convince everyone around me that I was straight by hooking up with random girls, even though I had to get drunk every time just to go through with it. It made me miserable which meant I ended up drinking even more. My parents are pretty big wine drinkers – well, they used to be – and my dad loves whiskey, so there was always stuff at our house, and even if there wasn’t I’d sneak stuff home from parties. It got to the point where I was just drunk all the time, even at school. My grades started tanking, and my parents were pissed, and all we did was fight with each other. They had no idea why I was acting out the way I was. But then, that spring, my accident happened, and everything changed after that. Unfortunately, by that point I was failing all of my classes, and it was too late to do anything about it… so yeah, I had to repeat my freshman year. That on top of coming out to everyone was pretty rough, but the fact that I was finally able to be myself made a huge difference. It gave me the courage to start going to AA, and to eventually date Derek, and slowly my life started to finally make sense.”

Victor leaned back against the headboard, pressed shoulder to shoulder with Benji, and thought about everything Benji had just shared with him. The pain was so evident in Benji’s voice that it made Victor’s heart ache, too, like he’d been there suffering through all of it with him.

“I’m so sorry that you went through all of that,” Victor said, rubbing his thumb gently over the back of Benji’s hand. Benji’s fingers tightened around his in response. “Thanks for telling me about it. I know it probably wasn’t easy to talk about.”

“Yeah,” Benji agreed. “I figured you’d probably ask me about that eventually, and to be honest I was kind of dreading it. I hate admitting to anyone how much of a screw up I was back then. I kinda worried that – I don’t know, that maybe you wouldn’t like me as much if you knew all the details of just how bad it was.”

Victor shook his head in disbelief. “Everything you just told me… Benji, it just makes me like you even more, because it’s proof of how strong you are, that you were able to overcome all of that and become this person who is so proud and confident and kind. I get that you’re not perfect, obviously I’m not either, but that’s okay. It doesn’t matter. I want to know _all_ of you, the good stuff and the bad, everything.”

“I want that, too,” Benji said softly, his gaze meeting Victor’s, and the look in his eyes took Victor’s breath away even before he leaned in and kissed him, so gently and with so much reverence. Benji’s hand came up to curl around the back of Victor’s head as he sank down low into the pillows, drawing Victor down with him. It was impossible in that moment to understand how he’d ever felt ashamed of this. Victor covered him with his own body, resting on his arms on either side of Benji’s shoulders as they kissed, like he could create a protective circle around the two of them that they’d never have to leave.

But time kept passing, and eventually dawn was breaking, those first bright rays of light attempting to slide past the curtains so unwelcome. Soon the alarm on Victor’s phone was chiming, and Benji was slipping away to the bathroom to shower, and it all felt like it was happening too fast. Before he knew it, they were back in the truck, with gas station coffee and sugary snacks to keep them awake for the ride home, and headed toward the freeway.

As Victor made the turn toward the sign reading Dallas/Fort Worth, he thought about what was waiting for him back in Brandon. It was the same messy life he’d left there yesterday: the father who had hurt him so deeply and unknowingly, the mother who’d lied to them all, the friend whose life was going to pieces and wouldn’t let Victor in to help, the broken, twisted boy whose own home could turn deadly at any moment. And along with all of that was the mask that Victor had to hide behind every time he walked through his own front door, every day at school, almost every hour of his life. He could see now how much it held him back, how it was keeping him weak when all he wanted was to be strong enough to put it aside.

During the last twenty-four hours, he hadn’t needed that mask at all, had he? He’d held Benji’s hand in the park and the restaurant, they’d flirted and danced together out where anyone could see them, and at the motel he’d opened himself up to Benji in a way that he never had with anyone else before. Putting the mask back on in just a few hours’ time was suddenly unthinkable.

There were blue skies overhead, one of Benji’s playlists pouring out of the speakers, and the air was warm with sunlight. The long, flat strip of highway rolling out before them felt full of possibility. Victor turned to Benji and said, “When we get back, I’m going to tell them.”

For a second, Benji frowned in confusion, but then his eyes widened with comprehension. “Are you sure? Victor, remember what I told you before-”

“That I have to do it for myself. Yeah, I know.” Victor smiled over at him. “Don’t worry, I am doing this for me. I’m ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys, the Tush Push and the Sleazy Slide are in fact real line dancing dances. You can find instructional videos for them on YouTube, if that's something you feel like you need in your life lol


	29. Gotta Be On My Own

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: homophobia, referenced violence and infidelity
> 
> Chapter title comes from a line in the song "Gravel to Tempo" by Hayley Kiyoko.

When Victor pulled the truck over in front of Benji’s house on Sunday morning, Benji had never looked more reluctant to get out of the car.

“Okay, so if anything happens today, you’re going to call me, right?” Benji asked, voice tight with anxiety. “Even if it all goes really well, call me. I am going to be literally dying over here until I hear from you about it.”

Despite the strength of his resolve to finally make this thing happen later that day, Victor was starting to feel extremely nervous now that he was actually back in Brandon again. “I will. I promise.”

“Good. And you’ve got that list of emergency resources from the therapist. Don’t forget to put some of those numbers into your phone just in case you need them.” Benji dragged a hand through his hair roughly, scattering messy strands of it every which way. Victor really wanted to reach over and smooth them down, but his hands were starting to shake a little and he didn’t want Benji to see it. Benji looked at him straight on, holding Victor’s gaze intently. “Look, if you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to. I get that your situation is kinda complicated. You’ve said that there’s a chance your parents might do something crazy like kick you out of the house or whatever, and if you decide it’s not worth risking that, I wouldn’t blame you. I know I told you that keeping our relationship a secret hurts me at times, but I’d rather deal with that then see you end up homeless or sent away to one of those insane ex-gay camps.”

Victor leaned back against his seat and tried to figure out how to respond to that. It was true that those were things he was worried about and that they weren’t beyond the realm of possibility. In fact, with the way his father had been acting lately, it was starting to seem likelier than it had before. Even so, they were his parents. They loved him so much at times it was embarrassing. He felt like in some way he owed it to them to believe that they were better than that. That even if they didn’t accept him right away, they were capable of at least continuing to love him and provide him with a home.

“It’s not like I’m not still worried about all of that stuff,” he told Benji, “because I am. But like you said, I have those emergency resources if I need them, and I have you. As scary as it is, I have to do this. I have to do it because I can’t keep living the way I have been. I can’t keep lying and being afraid all of the time. I want the chance to just be myself for once.

“I know it must seem a little crazy, especially after I spent all of last weekend freaking out and trying to find a way to stop Jeremy from outing me, but the thing is, that was never really about the timing. Or at least, not entirely,” Victor explained. “It was about Jeremy trying to steal something from me that wasn’t his to take. This thing, coming out, is _mine_ , and I’m ready now. I don’t want to let anyone take that away from me, not even my parents.”

Benji nodded solemnly. He reached out, ran his fingers lightly over Victor’s hair, then down across his shoulder, where they lingered. “Okay. I get that. You really are so brave, Victor. I know you don’t see that sometimes, but you are. No matter what happens today, I’m here for you.”

Everyone was at church when Victor got home, so when he opened the door and stepped inside, the house was silent and lit only by the early morning light streaming in through the windows. He was so tired from the night before that all he really wanted to do was climb into bed and sleep, but instead he found himself wandering slowly from room to room, taking in the familiar scenery.

There in the living room was the blanket his Abuela Maria had hand knit for them draped over the side of the armchair and the pile of Legos Adrian had been playing with scattered across the floor near the TV. On the wall were the collection of family photos that Isabel had arranged, including that one that Victor loved most, of all of them in Puerto Rico with Abuela Maria and Abuelo Juan before he’d passed away, and his second favorite, the picture of him and Pilar from the riding competition they’d participated in back in middle school, both of them grinning at the camera from the backs of their horses and holding up the ribbons they’d won.

In the kitchen, the fridge was covered in even more photos of relatives hanging alongside Adrian’s colored pencil drawings of castles and magical creatures and Victor’s basketball schedule. There was a pad of paper attached by a magnet with his mother’s handwriting all over it, her Spanglish shopping list reading _leche_ , eggs, _queso_ , _harina_ , butter, and underlined darkly, TP. Below these Armando had added items like AAA batteries and chicken feed. Next to the sink sat his father’s favorite mug, still half-full of coffee.

Victor walked past the dining room table next, trying hard to remember the good times that had been shared there, like if he held onto those memories tightly enough they’d block out all of the bad ones from the recent months. He thought of birthdays and game nights and holidays, of sitting down together with his siblings and Benji a couple of weeks ago, how strange and perfect it had been to have Benji there with them.

The hallway was gloomier than the rest of the house, but even in the half-light he could make out the spot on the wall where Pilar had crashed that skateboard she’d had in sixth grade, back when she was going through her skater girl phase. There were embarrassing school portraits which Isabel refused to take down despite the way they’d all pleaded with her not to hang them there, and nearby a wedding photo of Isabel and Armando, so young and happy, enclosed in a shining silver frame.

The first door on the right was the bathroom he shared with his siblings, the counter covered in Pilar’s make up and Adrian’s toys lined up on the edge of the bathtub. All three of their toothbrushes stood together in a blue porcelain cup by the sink.

Next was Adrian’s room, the floor barely visible past the stuffed animals and books and Disney figures strewn all over the place, and after that was Pilar’s, gothic band posters hanging up next to delicate strings of lights and a pile of dark clothes draped over her bed. His parents’ room, tidier but still lived in, one of his mom’s romance novels left open on her nightstand and Armando’s laptop on top of his dresser, the beat up notebook he’d been using during his job hunt half covering it.

Victor went into his own room next and laid down on the bed. He was exhausted but he knew there was no way he’d be able to sleep, not when he was so full of nervous energy. In about an hour his family would come home. They’d walk through the door and one of his parents would ask him about his work trip, and there would be chores to help out with and school work to get done, and for a little while longer everything would be normal. For one more afternoon he’d continue to belong here in this house, in this family. There was no way to know what would come next.

Victor knocked on his sister’s door and, like a normal person, waited until she called out to him before he poked his head inside.

“Hey,” he said, “do you wanna go help me with the horses?”

Pilar shot him a look like he was insane for even imagining she’d ever help him with chores she wasn’t obligated to do. He stared back at her pointedly and nodded his head in the direction of the kitchen, where their parents could be heard talking about something related to the utility bills.

“Oh,” Pilar said, finally catching on. She got up from where she’d been sitting at her desk. “Yeah, sure.”

Once they were safely out of the house and headed toward the barn, Pilar turned to him with a sly smile. “So. This work trip you had to go on yesterday. Who did you go with?”

Victor tried his best to keep his face perfectly neutral when he said, “Benji,” but there was no preventing the unholy glee that lit up Pilar’s eyes.

“Oh my god, I _knew_ it,” she exclaimed, punching him none too lightly in the shoulder. “You are _so_ _sneaky_! Was it even really a work thing? Or did you guys just, like, run off together so that you could have some sexy little rendezvous?”

“ _Yes_ , it was really a work thing!” Victor protested, swinging the barn door open harder than necessary. His face was burning hot right up to the tips of his ears. “How do you always manage to say the most horrible things? And who even uses words like ‘rendezvous’?”

“Oh, so you just _had_ to go spend the night at some motel with your boyfriend for work, how awful, excuse me while I don’t believe you at all,” Pilar snarked at him.

The horses did, in fact, need feeding and grooming, so Victor and Pilar set to work on that while they talked.

“I wasn’t lying about the work trip,” Victor insisted as he began brushing Beau down. “The espresso machine really did break yesterday, and me and Benji had to take it up to Texarkana to get it repaired.” Victor did not bother to mention that the machine had been fixed early enough that the motel wasn’t technically necessary because there were some things his sister didn’t need to know about.

Pilar raised a brow skeptically. “Mmhmm. And I bet it was all work and no play. Totally.”

“ _Anyway_ , that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about,” Victor said, trying to hide behind Beau’s back since Pilar would probably be able to take one look at his flushed face and know exactly what had happened. “ _Por qué eres tan entrometida?_ ”

“ _Por qué eres tan_ _astuto_ _?_ ” Pilar shot back.

He let out an exasperated sigh. “So… how was Abuelo’s fiesta yesterday?”

“It was crazy awkward, obviously, but surprisingly not as awful as I was expecting. I mean, everyone was giving Mom the cold shoulder except for Tia Kati, and Abuela kept shooting her dirty looks all night. It’s not like Mom is my favorite person these days, but it still really sucked to see them treating her like that. But then Abuela said something rude, and Dad actually stood up for Mom. I guess maybe that marriage counseling is really working for them after all.”

“Wow. That’s… that’s really great.” Victor felt hope blossoming in his chest as he considered what Pilar had said. Even though they’d been acting pretty normally, he’d been worried all day that his parents would be tense from whatever had gone down at the party the night before, and that it would make things more difficult for him when he told them. Hearing that his parents were getting along relatively well at the moment felt like some kind of sign, like today really was the day to make this happen. On top of that, Tia Kati had taken Adrian out to watch a new Disney movie with the twins and he wouldn’t be back until about seven thirty. It was as if everything was coming together just right for once.

“So why did you drag me out here?” Pilar asked him. “This better not have been a ploy to get me to do your chores for you.”

Victor’s palms were damp with sweat and he had to clear his throat before he could speak. Saying it out loud to her felt like it would make it real, like there’d be no turning back after that. It was terrifying, but he needed this to happen so badly, and so he forced himself to say it. “I’m going to tell them about me. Tonight, after dinner.”

Pilar stopped in the middle of untangling a knot in Elsa’s mane, staring at Victor in shock. “Whoah. Are you serious?”

Victor nodded a little shakily.

“Holy crap. Okay.” She put down the brush she was holding, giving Victor her full attention. “Are you scared?”

Victor choked out a laugh. “Yeah. I mean, this is basically the scariest thing I’ve ever had to do.”

“Even worse than that time we thought we found a rattle snake in the backyard?”

“Yep. Even worse than that.” Victor shook his head. “That turned out to just be a popped bike tire anyway, remember?”

“Yeah, but it was still pretty impressive when you saved us from it by flinging it into that tree with a stick.” Pilar smiled, walking around Elsa until she was right in front of Victor, and then she leaned in and gave him one of her brief, rare hugs. “You got this, _hermano_. You’ve always been able to be strong when you need to be.”

Dinner was so quiet without Adrian there to ask a million questions and put up a fight over eating his vegetables, and it wasn’t helping to soothe Victor’s frayed nerves at all. His foot wouldn’t stop tapping against the floor, and he dropped his fork with a loud clatter against his plate because his hand was shaking so hard, and he was pretty sure he was sweating right through the flannel shirt he was wearing. He barely managed to eat any of his food and what he did eat he didn’t even taste because he was so focused on just trying to get through the meal without hyperventilating.

As the minutes passed by he felt his resolve weakening, his fear starting to gain too much traction, until he began to worry that he was going to chicken out again. He had to do it this time. In order to force himself down the path he needed to take, he had to say something now, something to stop himself from just running away. It felt like his jaw was going to lock up and he’d never be able to get the words out, but somehow he managed to push them past his lips. “There’s, uh – there’s something I want to talk to you guys about, after dinner.”

Isabel nodded, looking a little curious but otherwise unaware of just how anxious Victor was at that moment. “Sure, honey.”

Pilar caught his eye, giving him a small, encouraging smile.

“It’s a shame you couldn’t make it to Abuelo Tito’s party last night,” Armando said, smiling at Victor in that way he’d been doing ever since the night at the hospital, like he was hopeful that he’d finally succeed in smoothing over whatever was making things so strained between them. “Everybody was asking about you and when your next game would be. I think your _abuelos_ want to come see it. I know they feel bad that they haven’t made it to a game since last year.”

“There’s one coming up in about a week,” Victor said, moving some carrots around with his fork without eating them. “I think it’ll be a home game.”

“Oh, great. I’ll let them know about it.” Armando took a sip of his water and then said, “So how was your trip to Texarkana? Did you get to do anything fun while you were up there?”

Victor very carefully did not allow himself to think too much about what he’d done in Texarkana with Benji. Across the table from him Pilar was biting her lip and staring fixedly down at her plate in an attempt at keeping a straight face.

“Uh, just got some good food and walked around a park a bit,” Victor answered, as neutrally as possible.

“Who did you say you went up there with?” Armando asked him. He smiled, eyes lit up a bit with amusement. “It better not have been that one I met when I came in the other day. What was her name? Angie? I don’t know how I feel about you going on a work trip with some college girl.”

Victor’s heart was beating so loud it seemed like everyone at the table must be able to hear it. _Just breathe_ , he reminded himself. _Just keep breathing. You can do this._ “No, um, I went with Benji.”

The warmly interested, maybe slightly teasing expression on Armando’s face froze then for just a second, before it began to darken as his brows drew together in a frown. “You were with Benji?”

The tone of his father’s voice made Victor’s anxiety ratchet up another notch. “Yeah.”

Armando turned to Isabel, who was pressing her lips together nervously. “Did you know about that?” he asked.

Isabel opened her mouth, closed it again. Finally she said, “Yes, but-”

“And you were okay with it?” Armando burst out, interrupting her.

She took a deep breath, stared back at him challengingly. “Why wouldn’t I have been?”

Victor’s hands froze in the act of pushing food around on his plate, a cold paralysis seizing his entire body as he watched the argument between his parents begin to unfold.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Armando said sarcastically. “It just doesn’t really seem like a great idea to me, letting our son stay the night with a boy _like_ _that_ at some motel halfway across the state.”

Leaning back slightly in her chair, Isabel crossed her arms over her chest defensively. “Okay, first of all, by the time I knew he was going all the way to Texarkana he was already there-” she shot Victor an unimpressed look that made him wince, “-and secondly, you are blowing this whole thing way out of proportion, Armando.”

“Or maybe _you’re_ not taking it seriously enough,” Armando retorted.

Isabel shook her head, glancing quickly in Victor’s direction with a worried frown and away again. “I don’t want to get into this here. We’ll talk about it later.”

Armando’s mouth thinned into a tight line, but he said nothing more about it, and just went back to eating his dinner. It felt like every inch of Victor’s body was vibrating with tension, with the need for either fight or flight, his eyes locked on his father’s face.

“No,” Victor said, his panic transforming at the flick of an internal switch into anger, “I want to know what his problem with Benji is. Let’s talk about it now.”

Head shooting up, Armando caught Victor’s gaze with a look of startled irritation. He opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Victor continued loudly, drowning out whatever Armando might have said. “First you ban him from our house, and now you’re freaking out about me traveling with him for work? I thought you said that I was old enough to make my own decisions. That who I choose to hang out with is up to me.”

“It is, but this is _different_ , Victor-”

“Why? Because he’s gay?” Victor shouted. He was so sick of this crap. The two weeks he’d been grounded, all the frustration that he’d felt at not being able to see Benji during that time, the unfairness of being told that Benji couldn’t come to their home again because of Armando’s prejudice, the hurt that Armando had inflicted over and over again with his ignorance, it all came to a head inside of Victor in that moment. “What do you think is going to happen? That I’m going to be like him just because we shared a motel room? _It doesn’t work like that!_ ”

“That’s enough, Victor!” Armando yelled. “We are not doing this again! You don’t get to just talk to me however you want to.”

Victor shook his head. “Why does it feel like this is all we ever do in this family? You two fight constantly, and then you take it out on all of us, and we’re so sick of it. It makes this feel like a shitty place to come home to! You need to do better – for all of us.”

Victor shoved his chair back from the table and stormed away to his room, slamming the door behind him. He was shaking all over, fury and adrenaline and fear all combining into one awful current of restless energy flowing through him, making him pace within the small confines of the bedroom. He’d been so sure that tonight would finally be the right moment to tell them, and everything had been going so well – his parents were as okay with each other as they ever were these days, Adrian was out of the house in case things got bad, he had Pilar’s support – but then his father had to open his mouth and ruin everything yet again. How many times was he going to hurt Victor like this?

It was like every time Victor started to feel strong enough to finally say the words out loud, Armando would find some new way to shoot him down, to make their home into a place where Victor didn’t feel safe being himself. Even though his father hadn’t known he was doing that, he’d done it all the same, and the pain and stress it was causing Victor just kept getting worse as time went on. He wondered if he’d ever be able to tell them, if there’d ever be a right moment.

Eventually Victor went to sit on the end of his bed, knees drawn up with his arms around them and his head down, just trying to breathe into the quiet, dark space that he’d created there. Tears were stinging his eyes but they didn’t fall. Each breath carried with it an ache in his chest and throat. It felt like he was mourning something, now that the anger was fading away. He remembered what he’d told Benji earlier that day.

_“_ _This thing, coming out, is mine, and I’m ready now. I don’t want to let anyone take that away from me, not even my parents.”_

But Armando _was_ taking it away from him, with his hostility and intolerance. Tonight Victor had let Armando take the choice away from him again.

It has hard to guess how much time had passed, maybe an hour or more, when there was a knock on his door. It opened to reveal Isabel standing there, looking so tired. “Victor,” she said gently, “Would you come out to the living room please? Your father and I would like to speak with you.”

Victor felt exhausted, too, worn out by the emotional turmoil and the stress and the lack of sleep from the previous night. All the energy he’d had before had burned itself out, nothing but a numb sadness left in its place. He wished he could just turn back time, go back to that motel room with Benji and never leave.

He got up and followed his mother to the living room, where he was surprised to see Pilar waiting along with Armando. Victor sat down on the armchair, looking nervously at those three familiar faces lined up on the couch. He could feel anxiety beginning to worm its way back in, past the numbness, pricking his skin with cold sweat.

Armando was more subdued than Victor had seen him in a while, all the irritation from earlier in the evening long gone. “There’s something we need to tell you both,” he started, in a quiet, nervous voice that surprised Victor. “Your mother and I have been talking a lot since we started seeing the, ah, the marriage counselor. Everything that happened recently, the – the thing with Roger, and me getting arrested and losing my job, the way I’ve been losing my temper so often lately, being stricter with you guys…”

Armando turned in his seat to face Victor. “I’m sorry, _mijo_. You were right earlier, when you called us out for the way we’ve been taking things out on you guys. I’ve been so impatient with you lately, and judgmental about this friend of yours. You _do_ get to choose who you spend time with, and I shouldn’t have said what I did about you traveling with him. You’re a good kid, Victor, and I trust you to make the right choices.” He wrung his hands, voice a little shaky as he admitted, “The point is, my anger issues and all of that other stuff has been happening for a reason. Things have been off with us for a while.”

“It wasn’t always like this,” Isabel said, working hard to keep her voice steady. “It used to be different, back when you guys were younger. We – we were happier then.”

There was a knot forming in Victor’s chest, wrapping itself tightly around his heart. He didn’t know where this conversation was headed but it was making all of his fear come rushing back in. He tried hard to sit still in the chair, to listen, to stay in the room and hear them out without giving in to the urge to run away from all of it. He glanced quickly over at Pilar, saw the same apprehension in her face that he was feeling.

“The problem is that we’ve changed over the years. Your father and I were so young when we first met, we were basically your age, and we’re not the same people anymore that we used to be. So, we’ve been thinking that it might be best if we take a step back, and figure out if we still make sense – together.”

“Yeah, and we think that the best way to do that is for us to… spend some time apart,” Armando said, and the way his voice broke on the final word sent a pang of fear right through Victor’s heart.

“What does that mean?” Victor asked, even though he didn’t want to know, not really.

Isabel held her head high, like it was the only way she could keep herself together. There were tears in her eyes when she said, “It means that we’re separating. Not forever, and not right away, but… we’re going to live separately for a while. I’m so sorry, _mis amores_ , I know how hard this is.”

So here it was, the next crisis, the next thing to drop like a bomb into his life and ruin the brief moment of fragile stability. All he’d needed was one good day. One day to take the courage he’d slowly been gathering and finally, after all this time lying and hiding and hurting himself in the process, _finally_ show them who he really was. But now they’d gone and destroyed that.

He needed to leave. He couldn’t stand to be near them anymore. Victor said, “I’m going to bed”, and he stood up from his chair, and he began to walk away.

But just as he was on the cusp of exiting the room, he paused. He heard his mom’s voice say from behind him, “Wait a minute, Victor. Wasn’t there something you wanted to talk to us about?”

He was so angry, and so exhausted, and so broken-hearted that this thing he had wanted so badly had been stolen from him yet again. With a mouth full of bitterness, he said, “It’s nothing.”

But then he thought of what Jake had told him, about how running away from his problems would only make them worse. How sometimes you had to choose to stand your ground instead.

He thought of Simon’s words, “ _All you can do is be honest with the people that you love. The rest is up to them.”_ Victor was so tired of being the one to carry this burden. Of being the one to change himself to meet their expectations. Of holding himself back each time some new crisis emerged, waiting for the timing to be better, for the moment to be right. Maybe there never would be any perfect moment. Maybe there was only the present, and he had to take it as it was.

And finally he remembered what Benji had said to him that morning.

_“_ _You really are so brave, Victor. I know you don’t see that sometimes, but you are.”_

Victor turned around to face them. “No,” he said, strangely calm now. “Not nothing.”

He took a breath, and on the exhale he opened his mouth and he said, “Mom, Dad. I’m gay.”


	30. This Love Ain't Made for the Faint of Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: homophobia (including homophobia within a religious context), description of a panic attack
> 
> The title for this chapter comes from "Faint of Heart" by Tegan and Sara, a song about the strength and resilience of LGBTQ youth.

Victor turned around to face them. “No,” he said, strangely calm now. “Not nothing.”

He took a breath, and on the exhale he opened his mouth and he said, “Mom, Dad. I’m gay.”

A breath in, another breath out. The world hadn’t ended after all. The relief was _everything_. It was all he could feel – this buoyancy – like cresting a wave, like floating in water. Relief coursing through his veins, relief pounding in the chambers of his heart, relief in his fingertips and in his toes and in every single part of him.

To his surprise, he felt the corners of his lips turning upward.

He’d imagined so many different scenarios for this moment. In his mind he’d screamed the words in rage or muttered them with frustration, he’d whispered them with fear and hesitation, he’d spoken them loud and sure and confident. He’d never thought it could be like this – something so simple, something that ended in a smile.

But then the silence stretched on. His parents’ faces, momentarily static, became animated again. Isabel’s mouth opened suddenly in a gasp, and then her hand came up to press trembling fingers against her lips. He could see the comprehension in her eyes, witnessed the exact moment when she began to look at him differently. Beside her, Armando’s frown of confusion deepened, his brows drawing together, eyes squinting at Victor as he shook his head slightly in disbelief.

“What?” Armando said. “What do you mean? Why would you say something like that?”

Pilar was sitting right on the edge of the sofa, glancing warily back and forth between Victor and their parents. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her look so worried.

The brief moment of peace – of relief – had passed. Now that whirlwind of fear-inspired emotions was beginning to drag him back into its depths. He felt like he was free-falling through that storm, weightless, reckless, his ultimate destination beyond his control. The hardest part had been the jump. He’d done it, though, and there was no turning back anymore.

“Because it’s true,” Victor said, looking at his parents head on. He said the words again. “I’m gay.”

“Are you joking right now?” Armando asked, his eyes searching Victor’s, no doubt looking for some sign that it was all just a misunderstanding. Waiting for the punchline to be delivered, the prank to be revealed.

“No. This is real.”

Isabel had yet to say a word, still just sitting there with her hand pressed against her mouth, but now there were tears running down her cheeks, glistening in the soft light of the lamp on the table next to her.

“That’s ridiculous. That doesn’t make any sense,” Armando scoffed. “Is this about what I said earlier? About the work trip? Because you already made your point, Victor. I get it. You’re not going to turn gay or whatever just by sharing a motel room with that boy. I’m sorry I even suggested that.”

“Dad, stop, just _listen_ to him-” Pilar started to say, but Victor cut in.

“This has nothing to do with that. This is just me. It’s who I’ve always been, I – I was just too scared to tell you before.”

Armando’s hands clenched on top of his thighs. He was taking short, shallow breaths through his nose. The look in his eyes was frightening. “Did something happen last night? Did he do something to you?”

“No,” Victor breathed, horrified by what his father was implying. “God, no.”

“Well, why else would you be saying that you’re – you’re-” He cut himself off, jaw working. “You like girls. I know you do. You seemed so happy when you were with Mia. And you’ve always been such a strong boy… This isn’t you, _mijo_. This doesn’t make sense.”

Victor shook his head. “I wasn’t happy with Mia, not really. I shouldn’t have tried to be with her in the first place, but I was still figuring things out then.”

Isabel finally pulled her hand away from her face, settling it in her lap without even bothering to brush her tears away. She asked, in a soft, hurt voice, “How long have you known?”

“About two months, I guess… but honestly, I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. For, uh… for years, probably. I wasn’t sure before, but I am now.”

“You’ve been thinking about it for _years_? And all that time you never said anything, you never-” Isabel’s voice broke, and she began to cry for real then. He caught a flash of her face twisting up in pain just before she brought both hands up to cover it, and that brief glimpse felt like a stab to the gut, a wrenching, visceral ache lancing through the center of him.

“I’m sorry,” Victor said, his own voice wavering. He didn’t even know what he was apologizing for, if it was for keeping this thing a secret for so long or for lying to them or for making his mother cry or for simply _being_ something that clearly hurt them so much. But he couldn’t help it, this was who he was – he’d already learned that there was no escaping it.

Isabel breaking down turned out to be the catalyst that finally made it all real for Armando. He sat there unmoving, his face blank with shock, and stared at her. For a long while no one said anything. Neither of Victor’s parents were even looking at him anymore.

Standing there in front of them, waiting on them to finally recover enough to pass judgment, was one of the most awful moments of Victor’s life. He couldn’t help thinking of that window at church. The first station of the cross. Victor felt just as vulnerable, just as exposed.

Finally, it was Pilar who broke the silence. She reached out, put a careful hand on Armando’s forearm, startling him a little with the touch.

“Victor’s still Victor. He’s still the same person he was an hour ago. This doesn’t have to change anything.”

As much as Victor appreciated what his sister was trying to do, she was wrong. This changed _everything_ , and he wasn’t sure that he _was_ the same person that he had been before he’d said the words out loud. He felt different now. He felt like this moment and whatever followed it was going to change him forever.

“You knew?” Armando looked away from Pilar, up at Victor again at last. “You told her about this?”

“Pilar kind of figured it out on her own,” Victor admitted.

Looking between the two of them in confusion, Armando said, “What do you mean, she figured it out? How the hell could she figure something like that out?”

Victor and Pilar’s eyes met in a moment of uncertainty. “I just guessed,” Pilar explained.

From the look of complete incomprehension on Armando’s face, it was clear that he couldn’t understand how Pilar would have guessed it. He leveled a serious look at Victor. “Does anyone else know that – that you feel this way?”

“Um. Just a few people. Felix, Mia, uh – Benji…”

Armando’s mouth tightened as he gave a short, jerky nod. “I want to know why. Why you’re so convinced that you’re – that you’re gay.”

The way the question had been phrased made Victor’s pulse speed up. He’d spent so long worrying about hiding this secret from them, that it was bizarre now to have to convince them it was true.

“I just – I just am. I’ve always, uh, liked guys, it’s just that it took me a long time to admit it to myself and come to terms with it. But I’m sure now. I’m not confused about it anymore, and I’m not – I’m not ashamed of it. This is me. This is who I am. I’m gay.”

The barely restrained anger in Armando’s gaze was palpable. The entire room felt thick with it. “So nothing happened last night? Between you and Benji?”

How should he answer that? Victor was trying so hard to be honest with them now, but that question terrified him. His father’s anger terrified him. The way his mother was only sitting there and crying, not speaking or looking at him at all… that scared him, too. Maybe what he’d feared all along was true. Maybe they really didn’t love him enough to accept this.

In the end, Victor’s hesitation gave him away. Armando leaned forward in his seat, breathing hard through his nose. Pilar shrank back from him, shooting a concerned look in Victor’s direction.

“I _trusted_ you, Victor,” Armando said. “I thought you were old enough to make your own decisions. To know the difference between right and wrong. I can’t believe that you’d let some boy confuse you like this, make you think that you’re…” He stopped, swallowing hard, his voice rough with emotion as he continued. “I know that things have been bad around here lately. Maybe that left you feeling… kind of vulnerable. And this boy, he obviously took advantage of that. But I know you, _mijo_ , and I know this isn’t you!”

Victor took a furious step forward, hands clenching at his sides. “ _Yes it is!_ This is me! Why can’t you just accept that?”

“ _Because it’s not true!_ Whatever that boy did to you, to make you feel like this, it’s a lie! People like that are dangerous, Victor. You need to stay away from him.”

Everything his father was saying, everything he was accusing Benji of, hurt so much that it struck Victor temporarily speechless. All he could do just then was stand there and stare back at him in shock.

“God, shut up!” Pilar shouted, glaring at Armando. “What is wrong with you? How can you even say something like that to him? You’re being such a homophobic jerk right now!”

“Pilar, this isn’t about you. Look, I think it’s better if you just go to your room now-” Armando began.

Pilar shook her head, jumping up to come stand beside Victor and loop her arm through his. He hadn’t realized how much he was shaking until that moment, until he felt the way it made her tremble along with him.

“No way,” Pilar growled out stubbornly. “I am _not_ leaving him alone with you guys.”

They descended into a tense stand off, no one speaking for a long moment, so that when the doorbell suddenly rang it caused all of them to jump. They stared at the door, no one moving, until finally Isabel wiped her face hurriedly against her sleeve and got up to answer it.

“ _Hola, buenas_ , so sorry we’re late-” Tia Kati said when the door swung open. As soon as she saw Isabel’s face she paused. “Um, is everything okay?”

Isabel nodded jerkily. “Yeah, we, uh, we were just in the middle of something. Sorry. Thanks so much for taking Adrian out tonight.”

Adrian looked up at Isabel warily, reluctant to enter the house. “ _Mami, que pasó?_ ”

Isabel reached out, drew Adrian inside. “ _Nada, mi amor, todo est_ _á_ _bien._ ”

The lie was so blatantly obvious that it fooled no one, Adrian included, but none of them said anything to contradict her. Isabel looked up at Kati and forced a weak smile. “Thanks again. It was really nice of you.”

“Of course,” Kati said, hovering a little awkwardly in the doorway. “Well, I’ll get going then. It’s almost the twins’ bedtime now. You guys have a good night.”

The door closed again. Isabel pressed a hand against Adrian’s back, guided him toward the hallway. “It’s your bedtime, too, _mijo_. Let’s go get you ready.”

The three of them remaining in the living room stared at each other in silence. Armando was still leaning forward in his seat and glowering darkly at them, his body taut with an anger it appeared he was barely holding in check. He drew in a breath, about to speak again, but Victor didn’t want to know what his father would say next. So much damage had already been dealt, and Victor was trying so hard to stay strong enough to endure it, but he didn’t know how much more he could take.

Before Armando could speak, Victor gently disentangled himself from Pilar and said, “I’m going to bed now as well.”

He turned quickly to walk away down the hall, Pilar following close behind him, and to his relief Armando didn’t try to stop them. They left him sitting there by himself, alone with his fury.

Just as Victor reached his room, Pilar put a hand on his arm again. He looked at her over his shoulder.

“You did really good, Victor. I’m so sorry that they were such assholes about this,” she said. “Maybe when they’ve had some time to cool down, they’ll be more understanding.”

Victor just nodded, mumbled, “Yeah,” even though he didn’t believe it.

He went into his room and closed the door behind himself. All of the pain was right there on the periphery, ready to come rushing in at the first sign of weakness, but he’d held himself together for this long and he could do it for just a little bit longer.

“Victor, hey,” Benji’s voice said from the other end of the line when Victor called him. He gripped his phone in a shaking fist close to his ear, like it would somehow bring Benji nearer to him. “Are you okay? Did you tell them?”

“Yeah. Uh, yeah, I told them,” Victor said.

“What happened? How did they take it?”

“Not – not great. But, uh-” Victor swallowed, let out a small sound in between a laugh and a sob, “but they haven’t kicked me out yet, so…”

“Oh, Victor… I am so sorry. God, I wish I was there with you right now.”

“Me, too.” It was getting harder to breathe and his eyes felt hot with the tears that were rapidly pooling there. He rubbed at them, but it only caused them to spill over, running fast and wet down his cheeks.

“Were they angry? Are you going to be safe there tonight?”

“I’m okay, but… my dad was pretty pissed,” Victor admitted, and then he remembered all that Armando had said, what he’d accused Benji of, and all of that pain that he’d been struggling to hold back found its chance to come crashing down on him. When he spoke next, it physically hurt to force the words out through his constricted throat. “Benji… the things that he said-”

Victor broke off, unable to finish the sentence. There was no way he could tell Benji what Armando had implied. Even though Benji had tried not to show it, Victor knew that he’d been badly hurt by Armando forbidding him from coming over to the Salazar house again, and this would be so much worse than that. Victor couldn’t allow his father to hurt Benji like that again.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Benji asked him.

“No. No, I don’t think I can right now.”

“Okay, that’s fine. I’m here for you, Victor. Whatever you need.”

For a few minutes, Victor couldn’t say anything else. He just sat there on the edge of his bed, holding onto the phone like it was a lifeline. It was hard to breathe through the tears, through the aching in his chest. Everything was a mess. He’d thought that coming out would mean moving forward, making things better, but right at that moment it didn’t _feel_ better. His parents were separating. They might not ever accept Victor for who he was. Their family was falling apart for real this time, fracturing into pieces that might not ever fit together again.

“I don’t even know what I’m feeling,” Victor said, when he’d recovered enough to speak again. “I was so relieved at first, and I still am, but now… It’s like I’m not in control of this anymore. This was my thing for so long, but now it’s theirs, too. They get to decide what comes next. All I can do is just sit here and wait to find out if they – if they-”

_… If they still love me._

Victor stopped, pressed a hand against eyes. This was why he’d spent so long running away from the truth, because he’d known instinctively that it was going to make his life so difficult. Maybe over the weekend he’d forgotten that; he’d become too relaxed when it was just him and Benji. He thought back to the previous night and how easy it had been to lie in bed beside Benji, all tangled up in him, like the rest of the world didn’t even exist. But it _did_ exist and this pain was the proof of it.

“This is still yours, Victor,” Benji said gently. “I know it feels like they have all the power right now, but no matter how they react to this, it’s still yours. They can’t take it away or change it or stop you from being who you are. As hard as this is, the fact that you finally get to be yourself now changes everything. It’ll make you stronger – strong enough to get through whatever happens next. You’ve already overcome so much, and I know you can get through this, too.”

Sitting there alone in the dark, struggling to get air into his lungs, it was difficult to believe that. He didn’t feel strong anymore; he felt like he’d used it all up just getting the words out and now there wasn’t any strength left. But there was so much hope in Benji’s voice. Victor wanted to cling to it, let Benji’s faith carry him until he could stand on his own again.

When Felix climbed into the truck with Pilar and Victor the next morning, he took one look at Victor and said, “Holy shit, dude. Are you okay?”

Pilar bit her lip, her eyes full of sympathy. Victor pulled out of Felix’s driveway and onto the main road toward school. He knew he looked awful; he’d barely managed to sleep at all for the second night in a row and that morning he’d had so little energy that he’d just thrown on the first clothes he grabbed out of his closet and hadn’t even bothered to comb his hair. In order to avoid running into either of his parents, he’d hidden in his room until it was time to leave and then rushed out to the car without eating anything. He wasn’t sure he’d have been able to eat, anyway, not with the way his stomach felt twisted up with anxiety. In the seat between him and Felix, Pilar wasn’t looking that much better. Her hair was up in a frizzy bun, and she was in jeans and a plain black sweater with no make up on, shadows lingering darkly under her eyes.

He kept his gaze on the road as he said, “I came out to my parents last night.”

Felix’s gasp was audible. “Wow. I’m uh… I’m going to assume from your overall appearance that it didn’t go so well.”

“That’s an understatement,” Pilar muttered. “Dad was a total dick about it. And Mom just sat there and cried the whole time.”

“Oh, man, I’m really sorry…” Felix said, wincing. “Do you think that maybe they’ll come around eventually? When they’ve had some time to, like, process it?”

“I don’t know,” Victor said tightly. He really didn’t want to think about it. He had an entire day of school to somehow get through, followed by basketball practice. Luckily he didn’t also have to work that day, so he’d be able to go home and maybe try and get some rest after that, but he was seriously dreading going back there. “Things are really complicated right now. I’ll tell you about it later.”

“Well, if there’s anything I can do, just let me know. I’m here if you need to talk.”

Victor gave Felix the best smile he could manage at that moment. “Thanks.”

“How’s your mom doing?” Pilar asked.

“A lot better now. It’s great having Aunt Cathy around to help with everything,” Felix said, but it was his overly positive voice, and his fingers were tapping out a nervous rhythm against the passenger side door. Victor was tempted to call him out on the obvious lie and find out how things really were, but he knew it was pointless trying when Pilar was with them. He’d have to wait until he could talk to Felix one on one.

“Oh, that’s good,” Pilar said, but even she didn’t seem entirely convinced. “I know things are majorly weird at our house right now, but we can help out if you need anything.”

“Thanks, Pilar. So…” Felix trailed off, clearly seeking some way of changing the subject. Classic Felix move, Victor noted. Always deflect whenever people got too close to figuring out what was going on beneath the surface. “What does this mean for you, Victor? Are you gonna be fully out now?”

Victor shrugged. He hadn’t really planned that far ahead yet. “I mean, eventually, I guess. I want to tell everyone at school soon, but first I need to deal with my parents.” He let out a heavy sigh. He was so incredibly tired, and the thought of trying to tell everyone else he knew just made him want to crawl into his bed and never leave. “This whole coming out thing is exhausting. Like, on TV it’s just this one big announcement and that’s it. Then you get to relax and live happily ever after or whatever. But it turns out that you actually have to keep doing it over and over and over again forever…”

Pilar snorted. “Well, maybe if you didn’t dress like this, you wouldn’t have to work so hard to come out all the time.”

They were stopped at a red light, so Victor looked down at himself, and then stared over at his sister in a mix of confusion and surprise. He didn’t know what was wrong with his clothes, aside from the fact that he’d put very little effort in that morning for obvious reasons. Even so, the striped green shirt with jeans and a navy hoodie on top wasn’t that different from what he normally wore. Not to mention the fact that he didn’t know where she was finding the ability to crack jokes that morning, when their lives were a complete and utter shit show.

Beside Pilar, Felix was trying to hide a grin behind his hand. Victor frowned at the two of them and demanded, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She looked him up and down pointedly. “Have you _seen_ your wardrobe? Everything about it screams, “repressed”. It makes me sad just looking at you sometimes.”

Victor sputtered. “What? You think that just because I came out I have to start covering myself in rainbows and glitter?”

“Now _that_ I’d like to see,” Pilar said, actually cracking a tiny smile, and then she and Felix dissolved into laughter at Victor’s expense.

Everything was so awful at the moment, with their parents’ announcement last night and their horrible reaction to his coming out, and Felix’s life was pretty much a disaster, too, and Victor didn’t get how they could find anything to laugh about. But after a second he found himself smiling, too, in spite of all that. It felt like he could either laugh along with them or break down crying again, and he’d already done so much of that the night before he didn’t think he was capable of shedding anymore tears just yet.

He reminded himself that as bad as things were, at least he had them. He still had people in his life that he could count on to love him and accept him no matter what, even if – even if his parents wouldn’t.

When he pulled into the parking lot at school, against all the odds, Victor felt a little lighter, a little more ready to try and get through the day. It helped when he spotted Benji waiting for them by the entrance, looking perfect in the Bowie shirt Victor had given him with his leather jacket on top, his hair falling down in golden brown strands around his eyes.

“Hey,” Benji greeted the three of them when they stopped beside him.

“Morning!” Felix said brightly, trying too hard to be cheerful again.

“Hey, Benji,” Pilar said. Her lips were twitching a little in an effort not to smile. “Have a nice weekend?”

Benji’s eyes cut over to Victor, his cheeks flushing a bit. “Uh, yeah. It was good.”

Pilar nodded at this, barely managing to maintain her poker face, and shot Victor a knowing look before she walked away to her first class.

Victor found himself just staring at Benji, struck by how surreal it was to see him at school after their weekend in Texarkana. They’d already been hiding their relationship for months now, so there was no reason it should feel any different that morning, but somehow it did. Victor’s traitorous mind began running through a replay of every moment they’d shared together in the motel, of Benji sitting shirtless on top of the table, Benji’s eyes dark with desire, Benji spread out naked on the bed…

Victor’s face felt impossibly hot. He desperately started running through a series of the least sexy mental images he could think of. The chicken coop. Chickens in general. Tia Maria Fernanda’s homemade cheese.

While Victor was busy reigning himself in, Benji looked him over, his brows furrowing. “How are you holding up?”

“I’ve been better,” Victor said. He felt so awkward, just standing there a foot away from Benji, not touching him in any way. How had he gotten so used to being able to reach out and hold his hand in such a short span of time?

“So…” Felix looked back and forth between the two of them, rocking slightly on his heels. He cleared his throat. “…I’m just gonna head to class then. See you guys later.”

“Bye, Felix,” Benji said, his eyes warm with amusement when they caught Victor’s. His expression quickly shifted back to concern. “I think we have a little time before the bell. Do you wanna find somewhere we can talk?”

A few minutes later they ended up in the utility closet near the gym again. As soon as the door was closed, Benji pulled him into a tight embrace.

“I’ve been dying to do this since last night,” Benji said, voice soft near Victor’s ear. Victor wrapped his arms around Benji’s waist, let his eyes slip closed. For the first time since he’d said goodbye to Benji the day before, he felt safe, like nothing could touch him when they were together.

Victor breathed in the familiar smell of him. “Missed you.”

Benji laughed. “You literally just saw me yesterday.”

“I know.” They pulled apart a bit. Victor sighed. “It felt like a long time, though.”

“Yeah. It sounds like last night was pretty rough.”

He didn’t want to talk about it, not then when they had to go to class in about five minutes, and honestly not ever, really, but he had to say it. “There’s, uh, something else that I didn’t tell you about last night.”

Benji immediately looked alarmed. “What is it? Did something happen?”

“Right before I came out to my parents, they told us that – that they’re separating.” Victor stopped in order to just breathe in deeply, so he could hold himself together somehow. He didn’t want to fall apart again, especially not here at school. The only reason he could say it at all was because he still felt so numb inside after a night of breaking down completely. “They said it’s just a temporary thing, but I don’t know. It kinda sounds more serious than that. I don’t know what to think about it.”

“God, Victor. That’s awful.” Benji ran his hand over Victor’s arm comfortingly. He shook his head. “I can’t believe you still managed to find the courage to come out to them after finding out something like that.”

“Honestly, I don’t know how I did it either. I just felt like I had to. Like I couldn’t keep waiting around for the timing to be right because it seems like it never will be. I really needed this, and I couldn’t let them hold me back any longer.”

“That makes sense. It’s kinda how I felt after my accident. I mean, the timing was pretty shitty – my parents were totally freaking out – but I just felt like I couldn’t wait even one more day. Not after all of that.”

“Yeah. I couldn’t stand the thought of pretending anymore.” Victor looked at Benji steadily, reached up to tuck a strand of hair behind his ear. It was so good to be able to touch him again. “I want to come out at school, too. Not today, probably not even this week. I don’t think I could handle that with everything that’s going on at home… but soon. I’m so tired of acting like we’re just friends all the time.”

Benji looked a little hesitant. He shifted his weight uncomfortably. “That’s a pretty big step, Victor. It’s… it’s not always easy being out here.”

The way that Benji was looking down at the floor, not meeting Victor’s gaze anymore, was unsettling.

“What do you mean?”

Benji paused, looking unsure of what to say, but before he could speak the bell rang. It was hard to miss the flash of relief in Benji’s eyes. “We’d better get to class. Look, we can talk about this stuff later. But maybe just hold off on any big coming out announcements at school until things are a little better for you with your parents? Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s amazing that you want to do this. I just don’t want you rushing into something before you’re ready.”

“Okay,” Victor agreed, but he couldn’t help feeling like he was missing something. They really did have to leave, though, so Victor kissed Benji goodbye and resolved to bring the topic up with him again later.

A full day of school plus basketball practice felt like torture. Victor somehow survived all of it, though not very gracefully. He was so sleepy that he answered several questions wrong in his French class, probably bombed his History quiz, and only made it through Chemistry awake because he was sitting next to Benji who kept gently poking him in the ribs whenever his head started drooping. Basketball at least woke him up a bit, but he was off his game to the point that Coach Harris gave up on having him run drills and made him organize equipment for the last twenty minutes instead.

“You better not be coming down with something, Salazar,” Coach had said. “I need you on your ‘A’ Game next weekend.”

Finally practice was over and Victor was able to head home for the day. He was planning to go directly to his bedroom without speaking to anyone and take a nap; he felt like he’d never been this exhausted before in his life. And then, after he’d rested, maybe he’d be ready to talk to his parents again after dinner. As difficult as it would be, he knew that he had to at least try. He couldn’t just leave things the way they were. Hopefully after a day to think about everything and calm down a little, his parents would be more willing to listen to him.

But when he pulled up in his driveway, not only were both of his parents’ cars present, there was also a black Camry parked behind them that he’d never seen before. He was fairly certain it didn’t belong to one of his relatives, and Isabel wasn’t giving piano lessons anymore, so he had no idea whose it could be.

When he walked through the door, the first thing he saw was Father Hurtado, sitting in the armchair in the living room. The priest stood up, smiling at Victor in that polite way he always did, but there was something different about his body language. A kind of stiffness, maybe, when he reached out to shake hands with Victor. Armando and Isabel were sitting on the sofa, both of them looking pale and worn out. Armando’s mouth was set in a grim line when he nodded at Victor in greeting.

“Hi there, Victor. How are you doing today?” Father Hurtado asked.

“Fine,” Victor answered warily, staring around at all of them with a feeling of unease growing rapidly inside of him. “What’s going on?”

“Come sit down,” Isabel said in a strange voice. It sounded as though she was working too hard to make it seem like everything was normal.

Victor stood there on the threshold of the living room, hesitating. This didn’t feel right. “I just got back from practice, I’m pretty tired…”

“Victor, come sit with us,” Armando insisted, his tone of voice making it clear that it wasn’t a request. “We need to talk with you.”

Reluctantly, Victor went to sit on the recliner. His body was so full of nervous energy that he found himself perched right on the edge of the seat, his sweaty hands pressed against his thighs.

“I’m sure you’re wondering what I’m doing here,” Father Hurtado began, his friendly, too casual tone of voice contrasting sharply with the tension Victor could sense radiating from Isabel and Armando. “Your parents invited me over to speak with you. They told me that you’ve been struggling with your sexuality recently and that you now identify as gay. They’re having some trouble understanding this and what it means, so they asked me to come and help facilitate a discussion about it. Before we start, I just want you to know that everyone here is only thinking of what’s best for you, Victor. We just want to help you.”

As Father Hurtado spoke, Victor felt all those familiar signs of panic encroaching: his heart began to race, his chest was too tight to draw in breath, his limbs were buzzing with nerves. _Not now_ , Victor thought desperately, _I can’t lose it right now. I can’t let them see me like that._

He took a breath, imagined Benji’s voice in his head, counting soothingly, and forced himself to stay calm. He needed to prove to all of them that he was okay, that there wasn’t anything wrong with him. If he broke down now, it would only further support his father’s belief that Victor was weak and vulnerable, that he was just confused.

“Okay,” Victor said, steeling himself for whatever would come next.

“Well, I’d like to begin by asking you to tell us a little more about how you arrived at the conclusion that you’re gay. Did anything happen recently to make you feel that way? How long have you been struggling with this?”

_Keep it together, Victor. You can do this._

Victor glanced quickly at his parents, who were watching him with so much fear and disappointment that he couldn’t continue to look at them as he spoke. He’d never be able to get through this if he did. He kept his gaze trained on Father Hurtado instead. “I think… I think I’ve always known that there was something different about me. But I guess my, uh, my feelings for other guys probably started two or three years ago. I’m not really sure.” He realized that he’d started to wring his hands and forced them to lie still. It was so incredibly difficult to talk about this stuff. He still struggled sometimes to talk with Benji about these things, despite the fact that he trusted Benji and felt safe with him. This, being put on the spot by his parents and Father Hurtado, explaining himself to the priest like he was at confession, was so much harder. He had to remind himself that he hadn’t done anything wrong; that he had nothing to be ashamed of. “It took me a while to understand what I was feeling and to accept it. That’s why I dated Mia last fall, because I was trying to figure out if I was attracted to girls. But I realized that – that I’m not. That’s why we broke up.”

“But how can you possibly know that after only dating one girl?” Armando interjected. “There are plenty of other nice girls out there, maybe you just need to try again with someone else, someone you like more-”

“That’s not going to work,” Victor protested, struggling hard to keep his calm. He drew in a steadying breath. “I liked Mia so much and I still couldn’t make it work with her because – because I just don’t feel that way about girls. Any girl. I… I never have.”

Isabel said hesitantly, “So, all this time, you’ve only had feelings for boys?”

Victor nodded, trying hard to ignore the way his mother’s eyes were shining brightly with unshed tears.

“These feelings you’ve had for other boys… are you sure that they’re not just feelings of friendship or admiration?” Father Hurtado asked. “Sometimes friendships between young people can feel so intense, it can be easy to get that mixed up with attraction. It’s normal at your age to want to spend all of your time with a friend, to care about them deeply, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re sexually attracted to that person.”

“No, it’s not like that. I mean, that’s basically how I felt with Mia. I liked her a lot, and I thought maybe I could be attracted to her, but I realized after we’d been dating for a while that I wasn’t. That what I felt for her was only friendship.” He stopped for a moment, swallowing. This was so difficult, but he had to say it, he had to make them accept that this was real. “How I feel about girls and how I’ve felt about the… the guys that I liked, is totally different. I – I only like guys. Romantically and, uh – sexually.”

Armando drew in a sharp breath at that, turning his head quickly to look away, out toward the dining room. Victor didn’t want to know what his father’s face looked like at that moment; felt almost grateful for the fact that Armando had turned away from him, despite how much it made his heart ache.

Father Hurtado’s expression didn’t change as he nodded, but his tone of voice was suddenly much more serious when he asked, “And have you ever acted on these feelings for other boys?”

Victor looked nervously in his parents’ direction, afraid to answer the question. He was so scared to tell them anything more than he had to about his relationship with Benji. He had no idea what they would do and he couldn’t help worrying that they might try to keep him away from Benji. But he also needed them to accept that he really was gay. That he wasn’t just confused or going through a phase or whatever Armando believed about it.

He tried as hard as he could to remain calm but it was impossible to hide the way his hands were shaking. He hurriedly moved them beneath his legs, pressed them firmly into the seat of the recliner. Gathering up his courage, he looked back at Father Hurtado.

“Yes,” he finally answered. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Armando shifting on the couch, moving restlessly. Isabel, in contrast, seemed to be completely motionless, frozen in place as she watched the exchange between Victor and the priest.

“I know this is a very personal question, Victor, but please answer honestly, as it’s important. To what extent have you acted on these feelings? Hand holding, hugging, kissing? Or has there been more?”

Victor shook his head. “I’m not answering that. I don’t feel comfortable talking to you about it.”

Father Hurtado looked for a moment like he wanted to pursue it anyway, but then he simply nodded again. “Okay. That’s fine. Victor, the reason I brought it up is because it is of vital importance to your salvation. In the Catholic Church, we do believe that there are some people who are born with certain… homosexual inclinations. It’s a cross that those people have to bear all of their lives, and it can make it so much harder to achieve salvation. But for people of that nature, it is still possible to live a good life, to be part of the church, if one is willing to deny those sinful inclinations and live chastely. I know it isn’t easy, and it must be especially hard to hear when you’re so young, but it is the only way to ensure that there will be a place for you in Heaven.”

For a long moment, Victor just stared at Father Hurtado in shock. He couldn’t believe what he’d just been told. “Wait. So, you’re saying that gay people have to be, like, celibate? Their entire lives? And that’s the only way to be a good Catholic?”

“Essentially, yes. That doesn’t mean that you can’t still have a rich and fulfilling life. You may find that you are called to service, perhaps in the church or in the field of charity, and you can have companionship in the form of friends and family.” The priest smiled, gesturing at his collar. “A life of celibacy isn’t as terrible as it seems when you’re a teenager. You just have to find your calling. For me, I see being a priest as the most fulfilling thing in my life. My work, my devotion to the church, it’s like a marriage in some ways. It makes me very happy.”

This was completely insane. Even his parents seemed overwhelmed by it, Armando staring uncomfortably into the distance with his jaw clenched, Isabel finally showing some signs of agitation in the fidgeting of her hands.

“Okay. Cool. So you guys all just expect me to spend my entire life alone. Never getting to fall in love, never allowed to get married or have a family or any of the things that everyone else can choose to have.” Victor could feel tears pricking his eyes, but he was too angry now to care if they fell or not, if his parents saw this sign of weakness. He thought about how good it was to be with Benji, how right and natural it always felt to be close to him, like he was exactly where he was meant to be. How could they possibly expect him to go the rest of his life without ever experiencing something like that again? “That’s really shitty. Do you get that? Do you have any idea what you’re even asking me to do?”

“Victor-” Father Hurtado began, but Victor cut him off.

“No, I’m tired of listening to this.” He turned to face his parents, scrubbing roughly at the tears welling in his eyes. Holding his chin up, he said defiantly, “Look, I’m sorry that who I am is such a disappointment to you, but there’s nothing I can do about it. This is just me. And there’s no way I’m going to spend the rest of my life alone just to make all of you happy, or to try to impress a god that I – that I don’t even believe in anymore.”

“You’re too young to know that this is really who you are, Victor!” Armando shouted suddenly, making Isabel flinch a little at the outburst. “You can’t just ruin your life, throw away your entire future, because some kid confused you!”

Victor found his own temper flaring to meet his father’s, weeks and months and years of frustration exploding out of him as he yelled back, “I’m _not_ confused, and you can’t keep blaming this on Benji! Did you hear anything I just said? I’ve had feelings like this for _years_ , Dad. Before Benji ever even moved to Brandon. You have to accept the fact that this is who I am and it’s not going to change.”

They were both sitting forward in their chairs, chests heaving, eyes locked on each others in a stalemate, Armando too unwilling to let go of his denial, Victor too stubborn to back down from this fight. He couldn’t possibly give up on this, not when so much was riding on it, no matter how scared he was underneath his anger, no matter how difficult it became just to breathe.

Father Hurtado began to shake his head, his hands digging claw-like into the arms of the chair. The speed with which his friendly demeanor shifted to disdain was startling. “You are turning your back on God, young man. Do you understand the dire consequences of the choice you are making?”

Victor glared back at him, his willingness to endure this awful lecture suddenly gone. He’d tried to do things their way but he was done. He couldn’t do it anymore. He couldn’t just sit there and listen to Father Hurtado condemn him to a life of loneliness and shame. It was his turn now to fight for himself on his own terms.

“The only choice I’m making is to be myself, finally, after all this time pretending to be someone I’m not just to fit in. Just to keep everyone else happy. I can’t keep doing that. It – it hurts too much.”

Isabel had tears streaking her face now, her mouth dropping open slightly at Victor’s admission. He was crying, too, unable to stop it, but he held his back straight, his head high.

“This is more than just a matter of life and death. This is about eternity. You’d choose a brief life of pleasure and sin over an eternity in Heaven?” Father Hurtado demanded. He looked disgusted. “Homosexuality is a _weakness_. It’s a natural inclination toward sin and perversity. You may not be able to help those urges that you feel, but actively choosing to embrace them, to rebel against the natural order of things… to renounce God Himself… If you continue down this path, then there is no helping you.”

Victor wanted so badly to shout, to scream, to fight back against everything that was wrong with what the priest had said, but faced with the pure contempt in the man’s eyes he realized there was nothing more he could say. He’d known Father Hurtado since he was a small child. He’d seen him every single week for years, listened to him joke about Bingo Nights and give sermons about the importance of kindness and love. That there could be this much animosity beneath the surface of someone he’d been told all his life to respect and trust was shocking.

But in that moment when Victor couldn’t speak, Isabel finally did.

“I think you should leave,” she said, staring straight at Father Hurtado. The three of them all turned to look at her in surprise.

The priest’s frown deepened. “I’m not sure that we’ve really finished this discussion… This may be a dangerous place to leave off-”

Isabel shook her head. She reached a shaking hand up to brush her tears away and then said firmly, “It was a mistake to ask you to come here. I wish I’d never done it. Now please, just go, before you make things any worse.”

“Isa-” Armando began tersely.

“No, Armando, we’re not doing this anymore,” she snapped, and then gestured toward Victor. “This is o _ur son_. Look at him! Can’t you see how much you’ve hurt him? How much we both have?”

Armando’s face gave away his uncertainty, but he still insisted, “Maybe this is something he needs to hear-”

Her eyes widened in disbelief. “You think our boy needs to be told that “there’s no help for him?” That he’s not worthy of a good life, that he doesn’t deserve to be – to be _loved_?”

Victor was shocked to see his father’s brows draw up at this, his eyes filling up with tears as well. He hung his head then, shoulders shaking, and didn’t say anything more.

Isabel stood up quickly from the sofa, walked around to the front door and held it open. With her eyes on Father Hurtado, she said, “It’s time for you to go. Please.”

The priest rose stiffly, pausing beside Isabel to look her in the eye before he left. “I’ll pray for you all, that God may grant you the wisdom to see the error of your ways.”

As soon as the door closed behind him, Victor jumped to his feet. He’d held on for as long as he could, but he was going to fall apart in front of them if he stayed in that room for another second and right then the thought of them seeing him so vulnerable was unbearable. He could feel it coming in the trembling of his limbs, in the shortness of his breath, in the too fast beating of his heart. He rushed down the hallway away from them.

“Victor, wait-” Isabel called out, but he didn’t stop, just hurried into his room and slammed the door shut before they could try to follow him.

He dropped to the floor next to the bed, his knees drawn up, head down. He squeezed his eyes shut against the burn of the tears. All the air was slowly being sucked out of the space around him, leaving nothing left for him to draw in. He gripped his legs tightly with his shaking hands, trying to stay grounded, but it was too late. There was no escaping the cold vise of panic that held him in its crushing grasp.

Time slipped away, taking with it noise and space and sensation.

Sometime later, when Victor came back to himself, he could hear the sound of someone speaking very close to him. It took a second to recognize the soft, familiar voice as his mother’s. He listened to her for a minute, to the repetitions of his name and the chanted apologies, before he lifted his head. She was kneeling there beside him, one hand on his shoulder, eyes red and wet. When she saw him looking back at her, she let out a shuddering breath and pulled him into a tight embrace.

“ _Mi amor, mi vida_ ,” she murmured, “sweetheart, _lo siento mucho_ , I never meant to hurt you like this…”

He hesitated for a second, his mind still hazy as it came floating down from wherever it had retreated, but then the warmth of her touch began to sink in, began to soothe his shaking limbs until the tremors faded away, until he could finally breathe again.

“I’m sorry, _Mami_ ,” he said, face buried in her shoulder. She was rocking him gently, smoothing down his hair, just like she used to when he was little. “I’m sorry I’m not who you wanted me to be.”

“No, no, _cari_ _ñ_ _o_ , don’t apologize for that.” She moved back slightly, cupping his face with her hand. “I love you, Victor, just the way you are. I’m so sorry I ever let you think that you weren’t enough. You mean everything to me, and I-” She stopped, sniffing and wiping away fresh tears. “I wouldn’t change anything about you.”

It was the one thing that he had always wanted so badly to hear his parents say to him, but never really believed they ever would if they knew the truth. All that time spent changing himself, smiling when he was hurting inside, lying just to keep the peace, hiding for the sake of making everyone else comfortable; all that time feeling like an imposter in his own home; all that time wasted on loneliness and fear. For some reason, finally hearing those words felt like having his heart broken and mended all at once.

She hugged him again, and he wrapped his arms around her, and neither of them let go for a long time. He couldn’t even remember when he’d last felt this close to her. Their secrets had grown as wide and expansive as an ocean between them, pushing them farther and farther apart over the years. In her touch, there was more than just love, more than acceptance; there was a homecoming.


	31. Yo Te Quiero a Ti

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: homophobia, discussion of homophobia within a religious context
> 
> This chapter title comes from the song by Residente of the same name.

“Victor,” Isabel said, pulling away from their embrace. She scooted over to sit next to him, both of them on the floor with their backs resting against the bed. Despite the fact that she had just told him she loved and accepted him, there was something heavy in the way she said his name then, something that hinted at an underlying hurt. “Why didn’t you ever say anything to me? About the way you were feeling?”

Victor hung his head, feeling guilty even though he knew rationally that he shouldn’t. “I don’t know. I was scared, I guess.”

“And it turns out you had good reason to be,” Isabel said, the words bitter. “We really screwed this up, didn’t we? I’m so sorry, _cari_ _ñ_ _o._ I never should have let your dad or Father Hurtado speak to you the way they did. I just – I just felt _so lost_ when you told us last night. I thought that Father Hurtado would be able to help guide us through this, give us some advice… I never would have imagined that he would hurt you like that.”

“Did you – do you believe those things he said?”

She hesitated for a long moment that made Victor’s heart race despite her assurances and apologies. These past four or five years she’d become so involved with the church, so much more devout than she’d ever been before. His mind was still reeling over the fact that she had actually kicked the priest out of their house; if he hadn’t seen it happen himself, he never would have believed that she’d do something like that.

“I don’t know… I don’t want to believe what he was saying about you, about the kind of life you’d have to live just to be right with God. The thought of you having to live like that – it breaks my heart, and it just feels wrong somehow, on some level that I can’t explain. But… Victor, you know that my faith is important to me. You – you might not believe anymore-” here her voice broke, and she had to pause for a moment before continuing, “-but _I do_. And I don’t know how to reconcile what I feel to be right with what I’ve been taught to believe.”

She wiped at her eyes, and admitted quietly, “I’m going to need some time with this. You have my love, Victor. You always will. But I’m going to need some time.”

Victor nodded, unable to say anything. It hurt that the simple act of accepting him had to be such a struggle for his parents, but at the same time he knew that he had to try and be patient with them. They’d both grown up in such traditional families, in conservative places, and Victor was asking them to set aside everything that they’d learned growing up. He knew it wouldn’t be easy for them, but that didn’t lessen the sting when he heard his mother say she’d have to work so hard to do something that should have been so basic.

With her arms crossed over her chest, her legs folded to the side, Isabel looked smaller somehow. Younger. She let out a long sigh. “I always wanted to be one of those cool moms, you know, the kind you can talk to about anything. I know I’ve never really had that kind of relationship with Pilar, and Adrian’s still too young, but I thought that at least with you I was doing good. I thought we were so close. That you trusted me.” She let out a small laugh, no humor in it. “But all this time you were afraid of me. You had this huge thing that you were dealing with all by yourself, and you never felt like you could come to me for help.”

“I… It was just something I had to do on my own,” Victor explained. “I wanted to tell you, so many times, but I just couldn’t. Not until I was ready.”

Isabel was quiet for a moment, looking around his room like she was seeing it for the first time. Her eyes traced over the posters and the trophies, the Puerto Rican flag on the wall, the collection of sneakers near the closet, his desk covered in textbooks and notes and half-finished assignments. Victor wondered what she saw when she looked at all of it; if she only saw the parts of his personality that he’d been able to show them, the parts that belonged to straight, Golden Boy Victor, or if she was able to read between the lines. Did she notice the new Jordans and wonder where they came from? Did she see the sketch of Brasstown that he’d hung on the wall near his desk, the one that Benji had drawn on a napkin at work? Did she see the pink pen sitting on top of his notebook? These little things had begun to creep in during the past two months, and he wondered what more would change now that he could finally stop hiding who he really was.

“I thought I knew you so well. You’re my boy, my oldest, and I’ve been there for every important moment in your life – your first word, first step, first time you lost a tooth, first time riding your bike, first basketball game and horse riding competition, first school dance, all of it… But now… Now it feels like I don’t really know you at all. Like there’s this big part of you that I never got to see because I was too wrapped up in myself and my own problems. Because I’ve been so selfish lately, and it – it kills me to realize that I’ve missed out on so much…”

It was hard to know what to say to that because in some ways Victor could see that she was right. She’d withdrawn from them last fall in the midst of her affair with Roger, closing herself off in certain ways that he hadn’t seen until he’d looked back on them in hindsight. But at the same time, he didn’t know if that really mattered when it came to this.

“Even if all of that stuff with you and Dad’s boss last year hadn’t happened, I don’t think it would have changed anything,” Victor admitted. “I think that this still would have been something I had to figure out by myself.”

“But you shouldn’t have had to feel so scared to tell us. That was our mistake, for not being the kind of parents we should have been.”

She was right about that, too, so Victor ducked his head, said nothing.

Isabel sighed. “I’ve missed out on so much already, but I don’t want to miss anything else. Okay, _mijo_? This isn’t easy for me, and it’s going to take some getting used to, but I want to know who you are now. Who this new Victor is.”

She bumped her shoulder against his, and he looked up to see the combined love and sadness in her gaze.

“I want that, too,” he said, leaning into her. “That’s why I told you guys last night. So you could finally know me. The real me.”

“I think we’re going to have a lot of catching up to do soon. But maybe you should get some rest first. You’re, uh, not really looking your best today, honey. Did you sleep at all last night?”

“Not really,” he said, and nearly followed that up with “or the night before either” before it occurred to him that he _absolutely could not_ say that to his mom. He firmly banished any and all thoughts of Saturday night from his mind. “I think I’ll try and take a nap now.”

They both stood up, Isabel stretching out her back and neck with a wince. “Ooh, I am way too old to be sitting on the floor.” She pulled him in for one more quick hug, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “ _Te quiero, mijo._ ”

“ _Yo te quiero también,_ _Mami._ ” Before she left the room, he found himself asking, “What – what about _Papi_?”

Isabel was clearly trying hard to look reassuring, but he could see the uncertainty in her eyes. “Just give him a little time, Victor. He loves you. He’ll come around eventually.”

Victor nodded, and when the door swung closed behind her, he sank down into his mattress, aching with exhaustion in every part of his body. He curled up on his side, dragging a blanket up over him. As he closed his eyes he saw in his mind the image of his father’s face as it had been earlier that afternoon, finally breaking down in tears. The memory settled like a cold weight over his chest.

Victor woke up sometime later to the sound of his parents’ voices shouting. The door to their bedroom must have been open because now that he was awake he could make out every word of their argument.

“So what are you suggesting?” Armando demanded loudly. “That we just accept this? We can’t do that, Isa!”

“Why not? What’s so wrong with accepting him for who he is?”

Sitting up quickly in bed, Victor shifted to hover on the edge of the mattress, his whole body instantly going tense as he realized that they were arguing about him.

“Because this _isn’t_ who he is! Look, I agree that Father Hurtado was way out of line today. I wouldn’t have made him leave like you did, right in the middle of everything, but all that talk about – about living a life of service to the church, never getting married… that was ridiculous. Of course I don’t want that for our son. All I want for him – all I’ve ever wanted – is for him to have a good life. To grow up to be a good man, to find a nice girl and settle down with his own family. To find a job he likes. To be happy.”

“Don’t you get that that’s the whole problem? _Amor_ , you can’t just define other people’s happiness for them!”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

There was a desperation in Isabel’s voice that Victor wasn’t sure he’d ever heard before as she spoke next. “It means that this isn’t just about Victor, Armando! _It’s about all of us!_ You can’t just keep us all contained in these little boxes in your head.”

“What are you talking about? What ‘boxes’?”

“Perfect wife, perfect son, perfect daughter… You have all these ideas about what we’re supposed to be, _who_ we’re supposed to be, and the second one of us steps outside of the box you try to shove us right back in again.” She let out an exasperated breath. “You pushed Victor into becoming this perfect boy, this boy who loves sports, who works hard and never asks for help, who never lets us see him cry. And if he ever rebels against any of that you come down so hard on him, just because that’s what your father did to you.”

Victor felt his heart clench at his mother’s description of him. He couldn’t help thinking of all the times in his life that he’d chosen something just because he thought it was what his father would want him to choose. All the times he’d set aside the things he’d really wanted: a doll, a storybook about a girl, anything in the color pink, a longer haircut; a movie he didn’t watch because it had gay characters in it; a song he only listened to with his headphones on, because it was too girly; sitting down next to Mia in Chemistry class instead of Benji.

“Don’t bring my father into this-” Armando began, temper exploding as it always did whenever Isabel brought up anything to do with his parents.

“No, it’s your turn to listen now! I’ve been so quiet these past months. I’ve bitten my tongue when I should’ve spoken up, over and over again, because I felt so guilty about what I did. But just because I screwed up, doesn’t mean I deserve to be punished for it forever. It doesn’t mean I’m no longer allowed to have an opinion on how to raise our children.”

“Fine then. Go ahead and tell me everything I’ve been doing wrong. Tell me what a horrible father I am,” Armando bit out sarcastically.

“You’re _not_ a horrible father – don’t twist my words like that, not when I’m trying to tell you something that you need to hear. _Amor_ , I know how much you love them. You have given them so much. But you have to stop trying to control everything about them. It’s not just Victor. You do it to Pilar, too. You’re always pushing her to like more feminine things that she clearly isn’t into, and you’ve never expected as much from her as Victor. You do it with Adrian when you discourage him from playing with the toys that he _actually_ likes, just because they aren’t macho enough for a boy.

“And – and you’ve done it with me, too,” Isabel said in a softer tone. It sounded as though she might be crying now, her voice choked with emotion. “You never liked me working, not even when it was only a couple hours of piano lessons a day from our own home, just because _your_ mother never worked. She never had any kind of life or interests outside of her family, and you keep trying to mold me into being some carbon copy of her. But I’m not _her_ , Armando. I’m _me_. I’m tired of giving up the things that I love just to keep you happy.”

“Isa-”

“Wait, I’m not finished yet. We’re all our own people, and you need to start accepting that. And yes, that means accepting Victor, too, for who he is. For _all_ that he is, even the parts of him that make you so uncomfortable.”

There was a long moment of silence in which all Victor could hear was the pounding of his own pulse. He was frozen there, right on the edge of the mattress, fingers digging into the sheets, and it felt like his heart was hanging in the balance, like Armando was unknowingly holding it in his hands.

When Armando spoke, it was so much quieter than before, voice gentled by the fear that Victor could hear in the words. “What if I can’t, Isa? What if I can’t accept this?”

Victor couldn’t stand the thought of listening to them for another second. He didn’t want to know what would be said next – couldn’t hear his father admit that he just wasn’t capable of loving Victor anymore. In a rush, he pulled on his coat and shoes and slipped out into the hallway, hoping to get out of the house before they saw him, but unfortunately with their door open, they noticed him right away.

“Where are you going?” Isabel asked, eyes wide with alarm.

He made himself stop and half-turn to face them, even though all he wanted just then was to run as far away from them as he could get. He explained, in the calmest voice he could manage at that moment, “I’m not running away again. I promise. I just – I just need to go out for a bit. I’m going to a friend’s house.”

Armando’s mouth tightened, his dark eyes locking on Victor’s. “Which friend?”

Victor came so close to doing what he’d always done in these situations and just lying, saying he was headed to Felix’s, but at the last second he stopped himself. He had done nothing wrong. He had no reason to lie or hide or feel ashamed anymore. He stared back at his father defiantly and said, “I’m going to Benji’s.”

“Absolutely not,” Armando growled, stepping forward, his shoulders hunched up and tense. “Don’t you dare walk out that door.”

Victor was breathing fast, fear and adrenaline rushing through his veins in a heady mix that had him trembling with the need to move.

“Let him go,” Isabel cut in before Victor could speak.

Armando whipped around to face her. “There is _no way_ we are letting him see that boy again.”

“It’s not just up to you!” Isabel shouted, and Victor was so done with this, with all of his father’s ignorance and fury and attempts at controlling him.

He didn’t wait to find out which one of them would win the argument, he just turned on his heel and started to walk rapidly down the hallway toward the front door. He only made it a couple of steps before he was pulled suddenly to a stop by his father’s hand gripping his shoulder.

He looked up quickly to meet the frightening rage in Armando’s face. It was so awful and so shocking to have it directed at him, from this man he’d loved and trusted his entire life, that Victor couldn’t help flinching away from him. Armando’s eyes went wide in surprise, mouth dropping open, and just like that he yanked his hand back like he’d been burned.

“ _Mijo_ – _mijo_ , I’m sorry-” he started, but Victor _had to get out of there immediately_ , he couldn’t bear to be near Armando any longer, didn’t want to hear his demands or his apologies.

Victor ran the rest of the way to the front door and out into the cold afternoon air, all the way to his truck. He climbed inside and started the ignition with a shaking hand. In a daze he backed out onto the road and headed toward town, white knuckles standing out starkly against the dark vinyl of the steering wheel. When he pulled up in front of Benji’s house he could hardly even remember how he’d gotten there.

The lights were on inside, warm and inviting, but the driveway was empty. When Victor knocked on the door, it opened to reveal Benji standing there, his surprise quickly shifting to concern.

“Are you all right?”

Victor shook his head. “I – I needed to see you.”

Benji reached out, encircled a hand around Victor’s wrist, and drew him into the house. As soon as the door closed behind him, Benji wrapped his arms around Victor’s shoulders, and Victor hugged him back just as tightly. He buried his face in the fine strands of Benji’s hair, breathed him in, and finally felt his pounding heart begin to calm.

“Did something happen?” Benji asked, pulling back to study Victor’s face. His brows were drawn together in a worried frown.

Victor looked around the house. He could feel his hands shaking again, knew that Benji could feel it, too. “Are your parents home?”

“Not yet. They’ll probably be home in about an hour.” Benji’s frown deepened. “Victor, seriously, you’re kind of freaking me out. What happened?”

“I – my dad, he -” Victor stopped. He didn’t know how to explain any of it, how to get the words out without breaking down completely. And how could he tell Benji what his father had said, anyway, knowing that it would hurt Benji so badly? Everything – the separation, the things Armando had accused Benji of, the confrontation with Father Hurtado, his father’s admission that accepting Victor might be something he simply wasn’t capable of… It was all too much.

Instead of speaking, he brought his hand up to the back of Benji’s head and dragged him into a kiss. Victor’s desperation made him clumsy, his lips connecting with Benji’s too hard, and Benji let out a gasp of surprise. Victor took the opportunity to deepen the kiss, using one hand on Benji’s hip to turn him, push him back firmly against the wall. It felt so good to get lost in this, in the feeling of their bodies pressed close, in the rush of heat that spread throughout every part of him. He groaned against Benji’s mouth, desperate to be as close as he could be, to just feel something that didn’t hurt.

Too soon, Benji broke away from him, twisting his head to the side, his cheeks flushed. “Victor, what the hell?”

“I’m sorry, I just – I can’t-”

To his embarrassment, Victor felt tears welling up in his eyes, his throat suddenly too tight to get the words out. He had no idea what he would say even if he could speak, how he would somehow communicate all that he was feeling when he didn’t even know himself.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Benji soothed him, running a hand over Victor’s hair and down to cradle his face. He leaned up and kissed Victor, soft and tender, nothing like the frantic, needy kiss from a moment ago. There was so much of Benji in that gesture, so much patience and kindness – sweet the way Benji was sweet, the taste marred only by the salt of Victor’s tears on Benji’s lips.

“It’s okay,” Benji repeated, and reached out to take Victor’s hand. He led Victor down the hallway to his room, pulled him down onto the bed. Victor moved in and kissed him again, a little too rough, but Benji pulled away, eyes steady on Victor’s. In the gray half-light, the brown of Benji’s irises looked so dark, bleeding into the black of his pupil, but the outer edge shone bright as gold. All Victor could do was stare back at him helplessly, mind a mess of thorny, painful things that he couldn’t seem to find his way free from.

“We don’t have to talk. But let’s just lie here for a bit,” Benji told him as he settled back against the mattress.

The hurt and the frustration in Victor wanted an outlet, wanted to seek release in whatever way it could, and it was so hard to simply be still, but he let Benji guide his head down to his shoulder, laid his arm across Benji’s waist, and tried to relax into him. For several long minutes, his body continued to buzz with tension, his limbs itching with the need to move. Slowly, though, the warmth of Benji’s touch, the steady rhythm of his chest rising and falling, the quiet of the empty house, began to leech away some of that restless energy. Gradually he felt his own breathing slow until it matched Benji’s.

“I’m sorry, about earlier,” Victor whispered. He pressed his palm into the curve of Benji’s ribs, felt the beating of his heart there. “About grabbing you like that.”

Benji was quiet for long enough that Victor tilted his head up to look at him. Benji smiled reassuringly, but there was still something a little hesitant in his expression. He said, “I don’t exactly mind being grabbed by you – it’s kind of hot when you take charge like that, but…”

Anxiety began to make a quick return as Victor waited for Benji to finish his sentence.

“But…?” Victor prompted.

“But the way you did it earlier didn’t feel right,” Benji admitted cautiously. “Us, being together like that, it should be about making each other feel good, not about running away from something. Trust me, I’m kind of an expert on running away from stuff I don’t want to deal with, so I know it when I see it.”

Victor’s heart sank as he realized what he’d done. “You’re right. I’m so sorry, Benji…”

Benji shifted, sliding down on the bed until he was lying on his side next to Victor. He brushed Victor’s hair back a little and kissed him lightly. “It’s all right. But will you just talk to me now? Tell me what’s going on with you?”

Thinking about all of it was the last thing he wanted to do, but he knew that he couldn’t escape from it forever, and there was a chance that he might feel better if he could just let some of it go.

“When I came home from school today, the priest from my church was there. My parents invited him over to talk to me,” Victor began, and he felt Benji stiffen beside him in alarm.

“What did he say to you?”

“Pretty much exactly what you’d expect a Catholic priest to say. You know, homosexuality is a sin and I’m going to hell and all that bullshit. He tried to tell me that I still had a chance at getting into heaven if I stayed celibate for the rest of my life.” Victor laughed brokenly. “But that’s not happening, obviously.”

“Fuck,” Benji swore. “Victor, that’s awful. I can’t believe you had to listen to that crap.”

Victor shrugged, trying not to give in to the pain that was ready to rush in again and overwhelm him. “It’s fine. I told him I didn’t believe in god anyway, and then my mom actually kicked him out of the house.”

Benji shook his head. “That’s still really messed up. You know that there’s nothing wrong with you, right? Whether you believe in god or not, what the priest told you was seriously fucked up and homophobic.”

“Yeah, I know,” Victor said, even though there was still some small part of him that wondered sometimes, that doubted. He asked, “Do you believe? In god?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? To be honest, we’re not that religious in my family. My mom’s Episcopalian and she still goes to church sometimes, but not that regularly, and my dad grew up Baptist but doesn’t believe in any of it anymore. Me and Isaac used to go to church with Mum when we were kids, but now I pretty much only go on holidays.” He paused, looking thoughtful. Victor wanted to reach out and touch him, but felt a little uncertain after what had happened earlier. He settled for simply placing his hand on top of Benji’s in the space between them and felt his breath hitch when Benji automatically laced their fingers together. Eventually, Benji continued, “I think maybe I do believe, or at least I believe in the possibility of god, but not in any serious way that involves following some prescribed rules, you know? It kinda seems like most of the problems with religion come from people trying to use it to control others in some way.”

“Yeah,” Victor agreed, thinking of his Catholic upbringing with all of its guilt and dogma. “Did your mom have any trouble accepting you when you came out to her? Since she still goes to church and all?”

Benji laughed. “No, I mean, do you know anything about the Episcopalian church? They’re super liberal these days. And anyway, my mom’s sister is married to a woman, so she’s had plenty of time to get used to having a queer family member.”

“Oh. That’s cool. You’re really lucky.”

“Is your mom having a hard time dealing with it?”

Victor nodded. “After Father Hurtado left, she told me that she loved me, just the way I am.” He drew in a sharp breath, trying hard not to cry again. Benji rubbed his thumb across the back of Victor’s hand softly. “But she also said that accepting me is going to be hard for her. I’m so grateful that she still loves me, and that she’s trying, but-”

“It doesn’t make it hurt any less knowing it’s such a struggle for her,” Benji finished. “Yeah, I know. My dad’s the same. I know he’s trying to do better these days, but it still sucks that he has to work so hard at it. I wish it could be as easy for him as it was for Mum.”

“Yeah. But my mom is trying, at least… unlike my dad.”

“Victor… What happened with him? You were so upset earlier.”

Victor swallowed, the movement painful, and tried to find the words to somehow explain. “He – he doesn’t want to accept any of it. He doesn’t believe that I’m really gay. He just keeps denying it, saying that-” Victor cut himself off. He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t tell Benji what Armando had implied. The tears he’d been trying to hold back began to sneak out despite his best efforts at containing them. “-saying that I’m confused, that he – that he might not ever be able to accept me-”

Benji wrapped an arm around his shoulders and dragged him forward, Victor’s forehead against his collarbone, and Victor fisted his hands into the fabric of Benji’s t-shirt as he cried. He hated feeling like this, like he was constantly falling apart and in need of Benji’s comfort, but he couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop himself from breaking down yet again.

They stayed like that for a while, until the shaking of Victor’s shoulders slowly began to subside. He turned his head, resting his cheek against Benji’s chest, not quite ready to look up at him yet. A calm was settling over him, bit by bit, not an absence of hurt, but at least a feeling of being a little more in control, a little less on edge.

He felt Benji press a kiss against the top of his head. “I’m so sorry that you’re hurting like this. All I can say is that it’s still so new to them. You only just told them last night. Try to give them a little time to get used to it, okay? The fact that your mom at least is willing to try is amazing, and hopefully your dad will come around eventually, too.”

Benji shifted and craned his neck a little, until he was face to face with Victor again, and kissed him. His lips moved to the edge of Victor’s mouth, and then to his cheek, his jaw, the corners of his eyes one after the other, kissing away whatever moisture lingered there. One of his hands was wrapped around the back of Victor’s neck, keeping him close. The gray afternoon sunlight was fading fast, the room around them growing crowded with shadows. For the moment it felt like they were back at the motel again, in a world of their own making, where everything felt good and right and safe.

“For what it’s worth,” Benji whispered, his eyes dark except for where they were edged with golden light, “I love you.”

Victor’s breath caught in his throat as he stared back at Benji in wonder.

“You don’t have to say anything back,” Benji hurried to add, his cheeks a little flushed, and looked like he would continue to offer reassurances but Victor didn’t wait to hear them, just surged forward, kissing Benji hard, with nothing but affection this time, nothing but a desire to show him just how much he was cared for in return.

When he pulled back, they were both breathless and smiling. Victor couldn’t believe how quickly he’d gone from feeling like his heart was breaking to feeling like it was too big to be contained. He was pretty sure it was something only Benji was capable of doing to him.

“Me, too,” Victor confessed. “I, uh… I feel the same way about you.”

Even though maybe he hadn’t been completely sure before this moment, the way Benji smiled back at him made Victor feel certain that it was true. He couldn’t quite say the words out loud yet but they resonated inside of him nevertheless, in his skin and bones, in the movement of blood and air through his body, in every place they touched. He kissed Benji again and again, everything about it good, every single one making him a little more certain.

A short while later they were still in bed and things were definitely getting heated, Victor gasping into a kiss as Benji rolled his hips up in the best possible way. He no longer had any idea what time it was or what he should be thinking about that wasn’t immediately related to Benji’s body underneath his own. There was just the two of them and the heat that being together like this ignited inside of him. Benji skimmed his hands down Victor’s bare back to the waist of his jeans, bringing one around to thumb open the button, when the sound of a man’s voice had them both freezing in place.

“Benji? Do you have company?”

They stared at each other for a wide-eyed second before Benji said, “ _Shit_ ,” and then they were both scrambling to find their shirts and make themselves look presentable. Victor could not find his anywhere, so Benji tossed him one of his own, and he yanked it on just as the sound of footsteps became audible in the hallway.

Dragging a hand quickly over his messy hair, Benji walked over and opened the door. A blond man stood on the other side, his light blue eyes moving back and forth between the two of them in surprise. Victor did his best to stand there and look normal, despite the way that his entire face and neck felt impossibly hot. The shirt Benji had given him was way too small and he resisted the urge to tug awkwardly on the hem.

“Who’s this?” the man, who Victor was assuming must be Benji’s father, asked.

“This is Victor,” Benji said. He sounded embarrassed but not actually scared of getting in trouble, which helped slightly to calm Victor’s frayed nerves. “I told you about him, remember? Victor, this is my dad, Mike.”

Mike looked him over silently for a brief moment while Victor stood there holding his breath, but then he gave Victor a small, reserved smile and extended his hand. “Nice to finally meet you.”

Victor shook his hand nervously. “Um. Nice to meet you, too, sir.”

Mike shifted a little on his feet uncomfortably. He nodded down the hallway. “I’m just gonna go get dinner started. Will Victor be joining us?”

“You should stay,” Benji insisted, looking over at him. “Dad’s a pretty amazing cook.”

After the fight he’d overheard between his parents earlier, and everything that had happened before that, the last place Victor wanted to go was back to his own house. Even though having nearly been caught by Benji’s dad was incredibly embarrassing, staying at the Campbell house a little longer was very tempting. “Uh, sure. If it’s not too much trouble,” he finally said.

“None at all. It’ll be nice to have you.” Mike began to walk away from them, but then he turned and shot Benji a somewhat strained look. “Door open, please.”

Benji’s already flushed face went a shade pinker. “Okay, Dad.”

As soon as his father was gone, Benji sagged back against the dresser in his room, groaning. “Oh my god, I’m so sorry about that. I can’t believe I forgot they’d be getting home soon.”

Victor began immediately looking around for his own shirt again and finally located it behind Benji’s desk. He’d have to be less enthusiastic about tossing it aside next time.

“What, you’re not a fan of Prince?” Benji asked, laughing as Victor tugged the purple shirt off and pulled his own on quickly. Benji bit back an amused smile. “That looked really good on you. I wouldn’t have minded if you’d kept it on.”

“It was so tight I could barely move my arms,” Victor complained. He had no idea how Benji, who was more muscular than him, could fit in it, although he kind of wanted to find out.

“Yeah, well, maybe it’s for the best if I’m not totally distracted by you during dinner. One incredibly embarrassing situation involving my parents is enough for the night.”

From another part of the house, Victor could hear the sound of water running and pans being moved around. He looked over at Benji nervously. “So… you told them about us, right?”

Benji nodded. “Yeah, they know. And don’t worry, they’re cool with it. I had a boyfriend before, remember? They’ve had plenty of time to get used to it. I, uh… I think it’ll be really nice for you to stay for dinner tonight. I know I’ve told you that things are still weird sometimes between me and my dad, but he really is getting better nowadays. And anyway, those southern manners he grew up with are so deeply ingrained there’s no way he’d ever be anything less than polite with you.”

Despite Victor’s fears that things would be super awkward, Benji’s prediction ended up being correct. Mike was a little quiet but otherwise a good host when they went out to sit at the dining room table, making small talk with them about school and bringing them glasses of iced sweet tea with slices of lemon. He seemed pleasantly surprised to discover that Victor played on the basketball team, the topic sparking a ten minute conversation that somehow had Benji looking simultaneously pleased that Victor and Mike were bonding and bored out of his mind.

Whatever Mike was cooking smelled incredible, something aromatic in a large pot that had Victor’s mouth watering. Amelia came home just as he was serving it up, hanging her coat up by the door and coming over to give Mike and Benji kisses on the cheek in greeting.

“Victor! It’s so good to see you again,” she said, leaning down to give him a quick hug. He was a little startled but couldn’t help smiling back at her when she pulled away. She sniffed the air, turning to grin at Mike. “Is that paella? Smells amazing, love.”

“How do you always manage to walk in the door just as the food’s ready?” Mike joked, bringing a couple of bowls of rice topped with shrimp and shellfish over to the table. Benji got up to grab the remaining ones.

“Instinct,” Amelia replied. “You don’t survive growing up in a house with five kids without developing an almost psychic ability to predict when there’s food available.”

As soon as everyone was seated, Benji and his parents began to eat right away, while Victor paused for a moment awkwardly before realizing they weren’t planning on saying grace. When he tried it, the food was just as good as it smelled.

“This is great,” he said.

Benji grinned. “Dad loves to show off his Spanish cooking skills. He used to live in Madrid a long time ago. That’s where he met Mum.”

Victor blinked in surprise. “Oh, really? That’s so cool. How did you guys end up there?”

“I traveled in Europe for a few months after I graduated from college,” Mike explained. “I really liked Madrid, so I got a job at a hostel and decided to stay there for a bit.”

“And I was there on holiday,” Amelia said, turning to Mike with a fond look. “I was only planning on staying in Madrid for a weekend, but Mike was so charming I ended up being there for nearly two weeks.”

“So does that mean you can speak Spanish?” Victor asked them.

Amelia shook her head, laughing. “Not me. I’m good with literature, but bad with languages, I’m afraid. Mike’s still fairly fluent though.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Mike said.

“You seem pretty good to me. You’re definitely better at helping me with my Spanish homework than Victor is, anyway.” Benji shot Victor a dry look. It had become a point of playful contention for them, Benji pretending to be annoyed when Victor was unable to explain something related to Spanish grammar to him.

Victor shrugged helplessly. “Hey, I learned it when I was a baby. It’s not like I can tell you what a subjunctive clause is or whatever.”

The conversation shifted to other Spanish dishes Mike had learned while living at the hostel in Madrid and then Victor described the kind of home style Puerto Rican cooking his mom was so good at, and next Amelia asked them about how things had been going at Brasstown. It was fascinating to watch Benji and his parents interact, to see where so many of Benji’s mannerisms had come from. There was the way he sometimes raised his brows and nodded slowly like Mike did, and how he dragged a hand over his hair when he was thinking just like Amelia. And now that Victor was getting a little more familiar with Amelia’s accent, he started to realize that some of the odd ways Benji phrased things from time to time had obviously come from her, like saying “I’ve got” rather than “I have” and referring to the shrimp as prawns.

The good food, the conversation, and the obvious warmth between Benji and his parents was so pleasant after too many quiet, awkward nights with his own family recently. Far too soon Benji was helping his mom to tidy up while Mike invited Victor to come sit with him in the living room. It was getting late, and Victor knew he should probably head home, but he really didn’t want to. He hated the thought of leaving the inviting atmosphere of the Campbell house for his own home, where his father with all of his anger was waiting for him. So he sat down on the couch with Benji’s dad and didn’t let himself think yet about leaving.

Mike struck up a conversation in Spanish about Victor’s family, his words accented differently than Victor was used to but he turned out to be pretty fluent after all. It was hard to imagine that this man, who seemed so polite and welcoming, so interested in getting to know Victor, could be the same one that Benji had told him about; the one who’d gone two weeks without speaking a word to Benji after he’d come out, who still struggled to accept him. He’d witnessed some discomfort when Mike had first found them in Benji’s room earlier that evening, but aside from that he’d been nothing but kind to Victor. It wasn’t until Amelia and Benji came out to join them, Benji sitting close beside Victor and linking their hands together, that he caught another flash of unease in Mike’s eyes.

It was surreal for Victor to be sitting there, holding his boyfriend’s hand and hanging out with his parents. He felt a little shy, especially when it was clear that Mike wasn’t as comfortable as he’d first appeared to be, but Victor kept his fingers interlaced with Benji’s, and after a few minutes the moment of tension passed.

Victor had been explaining something about the horses to Mike, but he switched mid-sentence back to English now that Amelia and Benji were present. “ _Comencé a aprender cuando tenía 5 años_ , but I didn’t try competing until I was ten. My mom’s the one that taught me and Pilar to ride.” He glanced at Amelia, smiled and explained, “Horseback riding. We have a couple of horses at my house, and me and my sister used to participate in competitions when we were younger. She still does them sometimes, but I gave it up when I started playing basketball. I don’t really have time to do both.”

“It’d be cool to see you do it someday,” Benji said, a little quietly. Victor squeezed his hand.

“Yeah,” he agreed, and even though he wasn’t sure, he said, “You will one of these days.”

Amelia smiled warmly at them and asked, “So how long has it been now for you two? Since you started dating.”

Benji looked a little embarrassed, but he said, “About two months, I guess.”

In his seat nearby, Mike shifted, his shoulders tensing up at the change in topic.

“Well, I know I shouldn’t say this, but I already like you better than the last one,” Amelia confided, which had Victor blushing awkwardly and Benji groaning.

“Mum, please,” he protested, but she just shrugged.

“What? It’s true. You’ve been so much happier these past couple of months.” She paused, sending a meaningful look in Mike’s direction that was so quick Victor nearly missed it. “And that’s all we want – to see you happy.”

Benji rolled his eyes, but it was clear that he was pleased underneath his embarrassment. “Okay, let’s talk about literally anything else now.”

The conversation continued for a little while longer, until eventually Victor knew that he really did have to go before he overstayed his welcome. “Thanks so much for having me,” he said, as they all stood up.

“We’ll have to have you over again soon,” Amelia insisted, giving Victor another quick hug. She turned to Benji and said, “Why don’t we send him back with some of the paella? There’s too much just for us.”

She and Benji went to get it despite Victor protesting politely that that wasn’t necessary. He pulled on his coat and was waiting near the door when Mike approached him.

“It really was great meeting you tonight,” Mike said, shaking Victor’s hand again. He said, slow and a little awkward, but clearly genuine, “Amelia was right earlier. Benji had a hard time when we first moved here, but lately he’s been different. Happier. I’m guessing that you probably had something to do with that.”

Victor ducked his head, muttering, “I don’t know about that.”

“No, really, Victor. We were – we were pretty worried last fall.” He stopped, cleared his throat. “I hope we’ll be seeing a lot more of you.”

“Thank you,” Victor said, surprised to find that Mike’s words had left his heart aching. To be welcomed by Benji’s father, especially today when his own could barely stand to look at him, meant more than Victor could ever express in words. Before he could attempt to say anything further, Amelia and Benji returned with some Tupperware in a plastic bag.

After Victor said his goodbyes, Benji walked him out to the truck, both of them stopping at the end of the driveway. A street light nearby cast them both in an orangey glow, catching on the hints of blond and red in Benji’s hair and turning his skin golden. It was cold, and the wind was picking up, nipping harshly at the back of Victor’s neck, but he found himself lingering anyway, desperate for just a few more minutes here.

“Thanks for staying,” Benji said, looking up at Victor in one of his rare moments of shyness. “I know suddenly having dinner with your boyfriend’s parents was probably a lot, especially after everything you went through today. But I’m glad they got to know you a little better and that you could finally meet my dad. I, um, I think they really like you… I just hope it wasn’t too weird for you.”

“It wasn’t weird. Honestly, it was so nice that I really don’t want to go home. And not just because everything sucks at my house right now,” Victor said, trying to make light of it and probably failing, judging by the concerned look Benji sent him.

“Are you going to be okay there tonight?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. I’m just going to try and go straight to my room without talking to anyone. There’s a good chance my dad’ll still be too pissed to want to talk to me anyway…”

Benji nodded, but he still seemed uncertain. “Just – just call me if anything else happens, all right?”

“Yeah, I will.”

Benji leaned up, kissed Victor slowly. Victor couldn’t help tugging him in a little closer, holding on with one arm around Benji’s shoulders, and wishing he never had to leave.

“Good night, Victor,” Benji said when he pulled away a moment later.

“Good night, B.”

Driving back to his own house, Victor felt oddly disconnected from his body, like he’d somehow left his mind back at Benji’s while the rest of him was moving farther and farther away. There was a bittersweet ache in his chest as he thought about everything that had happened that evening. The time spent with Benji and his parents, what Benji had told him – that he _loved Victor_ – the kindness he’d been shown by Amelia and even Mike, it was all enough to fill him with a strange mix of longing and hope.

He knew that things were still strained between Mike and Benji, but it was so much better than what Victor had with Armando at the moment, and he couldn’t help wishing that someday, by some miracle, he could have something like that with his own father.

When he pulled into the driveway at his house, he was surprised to find that only his mom’s car was parked there. Whatever warmth remained from his time at Benji’s was rapidly disappearing as a cold wave of anxiety washed over him.

Inside, he discovered his mom sitting on the couch, just staring blankly forward. The TV was turned off, and although she had a book sitting on the table next to her, it didn’t seem like she’d actually been reading.

“ _Mami_ , where’s Dad? Why’s his car gone?”

When Isabel turned slightly to face him, he could see that her eyes were red and dry, the frown lines around her mouth standing out a little starker than usual. She looked like she often did these days, worn thin and sad, but there was something different now. A new will to push through it, maybe. A strength that was holding her frayed edges together.

“He left. He’s, uh… He’s going to go stay at Nico’s again for now. Until he can get his own place.”

Victor walked slowly around the sofa, coming to sit down near her. His heart in his throat, eyes downcast, he asked, “Did he leave because of me?”

Isabel shook her head, her brows drawing together in an expression of pity. “No, _amor_ , he was going to leave anyway, remember? We had already decided that he would move out as soon as he found somewhere. I, um… I just asked him to leave sooner, because – because I couldn’t have him here anymore, not when his anger has had the rest of us walking on eggshells all the time.” She paused, reaching out to place a hand on top of his. “Not after the way he scared you today.”

She sighed heavily, her eyes closing for a brief moment. “He’s a good man. He can be so loving and kind, so willing to work hard for this family. I don’t think he’d ever raise a hand against one of us, but the way he’s allowed his temper to get completely out of control lately has just been so… toxic. We can’t all keep living like we have been, wondering what’s going to set him off next. I can see how stressed out you kids have been and it’s not fair to you. So that’s why I asked him to go.”

Victor nodded tightly, too drained to feel the full impact of what she was saying but knowing in his gut that it hurt, that underneath the exhaustion was so much fear and heartbreak. He held onto the memory of lying in Benji’s arms, remembered his mother’s embrace, and Pilar’s arm looped through his in solidarity. He told himself that even if Armando was gone, even if Armando had in some way left because of him, he was still loved. It made the ache a little bit more bearable, but he still couldn’t quite shake the sinking feeling that one of his worst fears was coming true.

“Is this it? Is he leaving for good?”

Drawing in a sharp breath, Isabel hesitated for a moment, and finally admitted, “I don’t know. Victor, he loves you guys – _all_ of you – so much, so of course he’d never really leave you, but… I don’t know if our family will be the same after this. I don’t know if the problems between your father and I are something that can ever be entirely fixed. All I do know is that we’re going to try, okay? We’re going to try because as much as this family is struggling, we still love each other, and that will have to be enough to get us through this.”

Before Victor went to sleep that night, he lay in his bed and wrote a message.

_Simon,_

_So much happened this week that I honestly don’t even know where to start, but I guess the big news should come first: I did it. I came out to my parents yesterday._

_It didn’t really go all that well. My mom basically just cried a lot and barely said anything while my dad… my dad said a lot, and most of it was pretty awful. He doesn’t think I’m really gay. He’s convinced that it’s somehow all Benji’s fault. Today they invited the priest from our church over and he told me that I’d be going to hell if I gave into my “sinful inclinations” or whatever. It sucked, but my mom actually kicked him out of our house and then told me she loved me, so that did kind of make up for it I guess. Hearing her say that… I don’t know if I’ve ever felt more relieved._

_But my dad has just been so angry ever since he found out. He tried to stop me from going to see Benji this afternoon, and for a second the way he looked at me really scared me._ _Nothing happened, don’t worry, but it was bad enough that my mom asked him to leave. He was going to move out soon anyway because my parents are separating. Yeah. They told us that right before I came out to them, actually. It was a really rough night._

 _Not everything that happened_ _recently_ _was terrible though._ _I had therapy for the first time and I’m so glad I did, it was super helpful_ _._ _And then on Saturday_ _I went on a work trip with Benji to repair the espresso machine_ _from the cafe_ _, and we ended up spending the night together. Simon – you were totally right before. About the_ _S_ _uper_ _B_ _owl jets and the tidal waves. All of it. He even told me today that he loves me. I’ve never been in love before, so I wasn’t sure at first if that was what I was feeling, but I_ _think I_ _am sure now. How did you know that Bram was it for you?_

 _Sorry to use a sports metaphor (I know how you feel about sports), but it seems like lately life just keeps throwing me curveballs._ _One minute I’m with Benji and I feel like I’m on top of the world and the next I’m falling apart because of yet another crisis. I don’t know how much more of these ups and downs I can take._ _I just want_ _my life to be a little less crazy…_ _All_ _that time I spent b_ _eing confused_ _and then_ _living in the closet was so hard, but I_ _survived_ _it,_ _and_ _I finally came out. So when are things going to start getting better?_

_Love Victor_


	32. I'm Spreadin' Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: brief mentions of homophobia and violence, brief reference to what may have been a suicide attempt, discussion of mental health issues

_VICTOR, YOU FINALLY DID IT!!!! I am SO proud of you!!!_

_How does it feel to be out?? There’s a lot going on in your life, and it’s not all good, I know, but still, you must be feeling so relieved, right?_

_First of all, the hard stuff. I’m really sorry about your father’s reaction. I can’t even imagine how difficult that must be, and then to have him leave home as well… God, that’s just horrible. I really hope that with some time you guys will be able to move past this and be close again. And I don’t even know what to say about them inviting the priest over. Please, please remember that you are perfect just the way you are, okay? All that stuff about sin and hell and everything is just a load of homophobic crap. If you’re having a hard time with it, though, don’t forget that Justin is totally here for you if you need someone to talk to_ _who’s been through something similar_ _._

 _Okay, enough of that, on to the good things, like the fact that you SPENT THE NIGHT with Benji AND he told you he loved you!! (Sorry to hit the capslock so much but I seriously can’t help it right now…) It sounds like it was an amazing weekend, and I am so happy for you guys. In answer to your question about knowing Bram was “it”… I think maybe I figured it out around the time that that guy I told you about was threatening to leak our emails. The thought of Blue just disappearing on me was so awful and terrifying that I would have done pretty much anything to stop it from happening, and that’s when I knew that how I felt about him was more than just a crush. It’s kinda crazy, right? Falling in love with someone I’d never even seen face to face (as far as I knew anyway). But love is sort of crazy and irrational like that, I guess. It sneaks up on you, a lot like that tidal wave metaphor;_ _it starts small, but then before you know it, it just sweeps you away._

_After everything you’ve been through, you really deserve for things to start getting better soon. I know you must be hurting a lot right now, but Victor – I actually think a lot of things are getting better for you already. Your family knows who you really are now and most of them love and accept you. Benji loves you. And you have friends (like yours truly) who are cheering you on every step of the way._

_Lots of love, Simon_

The first few days after Armando left were hard. Adrian was upset and confused, which led to him acting up more than he normally did, and even though they were all trying to be patient with him it was still frustrating. On Tuesday night he refused to touch his dinner, insisting that he only wanted Mac and Cheese, and then accidentally-on-purpose knocked his plate on the floor when Isabel tried to force him to eat the meal she had prepared. He threw a tantrum more appropriate for a four year old when Victor tried to get him to do his homework, and he nearly drove Pilar to commit fratricide when he stole a bunch of her make-up for an extremely messy art project.

Everyone else was tense and depressed as well. Victor couldn’t help feeling like Armando leaving was his fault somehow, even though he knew logically that it wasn’t, but the inescapable sense of guilt had him waking up early each day to make breakfast for everyone and doing more than his share of chores. Pilar became moody and reclusive again, hardly leaving her room, and although Isabel was toughing things out better than she had the first time Armando had gone, it was clear that she was having a hard time. Victor kept finding her sitting alone on the sofa in the evening, shadows under her eyes giving proof to the fact that she wasn’t sleeping well.

At least Victor had support from his friends and Benji, and another therapy session with Jake on Wednesday, which helped a lot to sort through some of the complicated, messy feelings left behind in the wake of his coming out and Armando leaving. It was a lot to deal with, though, and even after an hour of talking about only that with Jake, Victor still felt like he’d barely scratched the surface of everything there was to process.

By Thursday morning the four of them sitting quietly around the table eating Victor’s pancakes was starting to feel a little more normal. Adrian was finally eating again without needing to be nagged about it, and Pilar seemed slightly less withdrawn as she sipped her coffee and texted with someone, occasionally deigning to join the rest of them in conversation.

“Felix said he could give you a ride today,” Victor told Pilar, quickly finishing off his breakfast so he’d be able to leave earlier than usual.

Pilar frowned. “Why can’t you?”

“I’m, uh, picking up Benji,” Victor said in a rush, already getting up from his seat in order to rinse off his plate. He didn’t need to turn around and see his sister to know that she was giving him one of her sly looks.

“Are you leaving _now_?” she asked in an overly-surprised tone. “It’s _super_ early. What are you and Benji planning on doing with all that extra time?”

Victor glared at her over his shoulder and tried to ignore the way Isabel was listening intently to this exchange. He said awkwardly, “We’re gonna get coffee before school.”

Pilar nodded toward the kitchen. “There’s a pot of coffee right next to you. That you just made.”

He tried to communicate with his eyes just how much he hated her at that moment. “We like the coffee at Brasstown better.”

“Mmhmm,” Pilar said, entirely unconvinced.

Just as he was about to exit the kitchen and hopefully escape from them before his mom’s curiosity got the best of her, Isabel said, “So… Benji. Is he, uh… Are you two…?”

Victor stared back at her like a deer caught in headlights. He’d already come out to her, so why was it suddenly so difficult to admit that he had a boyfriend? Maybe there was still some residual fear of talking about it after Armando had tried to stop him from seeing Benji on Monday. Or maybe it was just the usual embarrassment he always felt when his mom was overly curious about his private life that was preventing him from saying it.

Whatever it was, Pilar rolled her eyes at Victor’s hesitation and said, “Yep, they totally are.”

“Pilar!” he snapped in annoyance.

“What? You’re out now, so why’s it such a big deal telling her you have a boyfriend?”

“Victor has a boyfriend?”

All three of them turned to stare at Adrian, momentarily struck speechless.

Frowning in confusion, Adrian asked Pilar, “Don’t you mean a _girlfriend_?”

There was a long pause while they all tried to figure out how to respond to this. Finally, before Isabel or Pilar could try to step in, Victor spoke up. Even though he had no idea how you were supposed to come out to a seven year old, it was his thing to tell, and he would have to at least try. Even though technically Pilar had already kind of outed him.

“No, not a girlfriend,” Victor said slowly. “I, uh… I realized that I don’t like girls that way. You know, like, in a romantic way. I just like guys.”

“Oh,” Adrian said, absorbing this information more easily than Victor would have expected. “Okay. So Benji is your boyfriend?”

Victor caught his mom’s eyes for just a moment, and although there was some obvious discomfort visible there, she didn’t seem upset. He nodded, and told his brother, “Yeah, he is.”

Adrian pondered this for about five seconds before scrunching up his nose and asking, “Does that mean that you guys kiss?”

Considering that Victor was trying to leave the house early just so that he could park somewhere with Benji before school started and most likely do a lot of kissing, this question left him extremely flustered. “Um, we, uh…”

“Well?” Pilar said, cackling. “Do you?”

Isabel rolled her eyes. “ _Mija_ , knock it off. I’m pretty sure you’ve embarrassed your brother enough for one morning.”

“I’m just gonna go now…” Victor said, inching out of the room, more than ready to get away from all of them.

“All right, _pases un buen dia,_ _amor_.” Isabel hesitated for just a second, fidgeting a little with the napkin in her hand. She looked up and offered him a small, slightly nervous smile. “Say hi to Benji.”

It was awkward, and the way she was smiling didn’t quite reach her eyes, and it was nothing like the excitement she’d shown when it had been Mia he was dating. Even so, she was here, and she was trying, and Victor was grateful for that.

He nodded at her and slipped away quickly before Pilar could say anything else. Outside the sky was heavy with dark gray clouds, the wind kicking up columns of dust that stung his eyes on the way to the truck. He barely made it into the cab before fat raindrops began to fall, streaking the glass with rivers of bright silver. It was coming down hard by the time he got to Benji’s house, flooding the streets with rapidly flowing streams of water. Benji ran out to the truck with his coat pulled over his head, jumping in quickly, but he was still pretty damp from even that brief exposure. When Victor leaned over to kiss him, the material of Benji’s leather jacket pressed wetly against his hoodie.

“Good morning,” Benji said, pulling away and trying to straighten out his hair. Victor grinned and reached over to help him smooth it down, even though he secretly liked seeing it a little messed up. “Thanks for coming to get me.”

“Oh yeah, I mean, it was such hassle,” Victor teased.

Benji moved in close. “Guess I’ll have to find some way to make it up to you,” he promised, right before he kissed Victor again, dragging his lips slowly and with just a hint of teeth over Victor’s. The kissing continued for several glorious minutes, made all the better by the privacy the fogged up, rain-spotted windows afforded them, until Benji eventually pulled away from him. He seemed just as reluctant to stop as Victor, but the fact that Victor had arrived later than planned meant that they didn’t have much time left before they needed to leave.

Victor groaned. “Do we have to go to school? Couldn’t we just do this all day?”

“You’re right. What do we need an education for anyway?”

“Well, spending time with you has been pretty educational…” Victor admitted, and it was worth the flush he felt spreading over his face as he said it for the look Benji gave him, eyes dark and warm.

“You must be referring to my impressive barista skills,” Benji quipped, and they both laughed.

Victor threaded their hands together. “Sorry I was a little late getting over here. I, uh, kinda came out to my little brother this morning? Unexpectedly? Well, it was mostly Pilar’s fault, but…”

“How did that go?”

“Really good, actually. I guess I would have thought it’d be harder to explain to a little kid, but Adrian just accepted it right away.”

“He seems pretty smart, and he obviously adores you. It’s not too surprising he’d be fine with it.”

“So this means I’m out to all of them now. My whole family. It’s kinda hard to believe it’s real. I keep waking up in the morning and thinking it was all some crazy dream, but then I get up and I remember that-” He paused, the good mood he’d been in fading. “-that my dad is gone, and everything feels so different at home now, but in some ways… it’s better. Even though I hate that he left and I feel so guilty sometimes thinking it, it’s kind of a relief.”

“Victor, he was the one making you guys feel so uncomfortable all the time, and after everything he said to you… you shouldn’t feel guilty about needing that to stop.”

“Yeah, I guess. So… you said you had something you wanted to talk to me about this morning?”

Benji nodded. “I talked with Dani, my, uh, my sponsor, about Jeremy. Dani works at the Queer Resource Center at Brandon College, so she had some good suggestions for how we might be able to help him. I was thinking that, if you’re okay with it, maybe we could try and talk to him today.”

“We’ll have to be really careful about how we do it,” Victor hedged. Every time he’d seen Jeremy at school since their confrontation at Jeremy’s house, the other boy had gone out of his way to avoid Victor like the plague. He’d move to the far side of the hallway if Victor was passing by, and in the one class they had together Jeremy always made sure to sit as far away from him as he possibly could. It wasn’t like Victor had been actively trying to make contact with him on all of those occasions, but he’d been hoping to at least check in on him. That turned out to be impossible considering that any time he got anywhere close to him, Jeremy bolted.

“Yeah, I know,” Benji agreed. “You know him better than I do, so you can take the lead on this. Dani gave me some stuff that we could pass on to him – like, some resources for queer youth and people experiencing domestic abuse. I know we can’t force him to get help, but we have to at least try and let him know that there are people out there who will help him if he’s willing to ask.”

Even though Victor had a feeling that approaching Jeremy would be extremely difficult and there was a good chance it wouldn’t go well at all, he knew that Benji was right. They had to try.

“Okay,” he agreed. “I don’t have basketball practice today, so let’s look for him after school.”

There were around a thousand students at Brandon High School, most of whom left in a rush as soon as the bell rang at the end of the last period, so Victor was worried that they wouldn’t be able to even find Jeremy in the crowd. He ended up asking Alicia about him as they were headed out of the cafeteria after lunch.

“Hey, I need to talk to Jeremy about something later,” Victor said, and Alicia’s brows immediately went up in surprise. “Do you know where his locker is?”

“You want to talk to Jeremy?” she echoed skeptically.

“Um, yeah, it’s about an assignment for History,” Victor lied.

“Oh. Well, it’s in that hallway near the music room, about halfway down.” She looked at Victor for a long moment, considering. “Victor, did he… I mean, has he ever…” She bit her lip anxiously. “You know what, never mind. My next class is that way, so I’ll see you later.”

“Oh, okay. Bye.” Victor stared after her in confusion as she walked away, wondering what had just happened.

When the last period finished, he met Benji in the hall Alicia had mentioned and they waited there together for Jeremy to show up. They didn’t have to wait long before a tall, thin figure dressed entirely in black and gray appeared, clearly hurrying to get his things out of his locker and escape from school for the day.

“Okay, here goes,” Victor said nervously and then led the way over to him. The second Jeremy looked up and caught sight of them approaching, he slammed his locker shut and glowered. There was a hint of a flush in his sallow cheeks, but it was hard to tell if it was the result of embarrassment or irritation.

Victor stopped in front of Jeremy, Benji beside him, and hoped that Jeremy wouldn’t just try and run away from him again. “Hey, we wanted to talk to you about something. Could you come outside with us for a few minutes?”

Jeremy looked back and forth between them, his shoulders hunching up defensively, and it was difficult to miss the way his eyes narrowed when they passed over Benji.

“Yeah, that’s gonna be a hard pass,” Jeremy sneered. “I’d rather do literally anything else than talk to you two.”

“It’ll only take a second,” Benji said, clearly trying to keep his tone light. “Then we’ll stay out of your way.”

“I need you to stay out of my way _now_ ,” Jeremy snapped, glaring fiercely at Benji. Victor was beginning to realize that it had been a mistake to approach him together; Jeremy’s animosity toward Benji was going to make this conversation impossible.

He shot Benji an apologetic look and said to Jeremy, “Look, why don’t just you and I talk?”

Jeremy stared at him, the flush on his cheeks darkening, and seemed like he might actually be considering it now.

“Please?” Victor pleaded. “It’s important.”

“Fine. If you can bear to be separated from your little boyfriend for that long,” Jeremy said. There was a hint of satisfaction in his eyes as they cut over toward Benji, who didn’t look at all happy about the way things had worked out. “Let’s get this over with then.”

“Sorry,” Victor muttered quietly as Benji handed over some of the papers he’d gotten from Dani. He discretely brushed his thumb across Benji’s wrist in what he hoped was a soothing gesture. “I’ll be right back.”

He followed Jeremy out across the parking lot toward a quiet area behind the theater building. The torrential rain from earlier in the day had passed, but the gravel underfoot was still a dark gray, spotted with muddy brown puddles that they had to step around. Once they were out of sight from the main part of the school, Jeremy came to an abrupt stop, turning to face Victor with his arms crossed over his chest.

“So what’s this all about then?” he demanded.

“I, uh… I wanted to talk to you. About your situation at home-” Victor started, but before he could get any further Jeremy cut in with a derisive bark of laughter.

“Are you fucking kidding me? I already told you to stay out of it.”

It was hard to keep his calm when faced with so much scorn, but Victor took a deep breath and did his best. “Well, I can’t, okay? I’m sorry but I can’t just ignore the fact that you were violently attacked by your own dad, and it could happen again at any time. That’s not the kind of thing that anyone should be able to just ignore.”

“My stepmom and my sisters sure aren’t having any trouble with it,” Jeremy said, the hurt underlying the bitter words reminding Victor of why he was doing this. As much as he still disliked him, he knew that no one deserved to go through what Jeremy was dealing with.

“I’m sorry. It’s beyond shitty that no one else has tried to help you before this. But if you’re willing to let me, I will.”

Jeremy shook his head in disbelief. “Would you just stop pretending like you give a shit? Nobody cares what happens to me. I figured that out a long time ago. I know that’s probably hard for someone like you to understand, but we don’t all get to have best friends and date the hottest people at school and win fucking popularity contests.”

For a second, Victor was tempted to tell Jeremy everything – about his dad leaving home right after Victor came out, about his parents’ separation, about Mia not even speaking to him anymore – but in the end he realized that they weren’t there to compare their wounds and see whose cut the deepest. This conversation wasn’t about Victor.

“No one gets close to you because all you ever do is push everyone away,” Victor said, and by the quick intake of breath from Jeremy he knew that he’d struck a nerve. He didn’t know if this was the right thing to say or if it would just piss Jeremy off and drive him away again, but he followed his instincts and hoped that it would somehow get through to him. “Alicia really liked you. You treated her like crap for months but she stuck around anyway, and maybe you guys never should have dated, but if you’d tried, I bet she would have been your friend. All of us – Felix, Matt, Feña, me – we were all ready to give you a chance when you started hanging out with us last year, but everyday you’d just find new ways of insulting one of us. I kind of get it now. You were hurting and so you hurt other people to make yourself feel stronger, but all that ever does is spread the pain around. It doesn’t make it go away. It doesn’t make anything better.”

There was a fine tremor running through Jeremy’s body, every inch of his thin frame fraught with tension.

“Well, sorry for not being good enough for you.”

It was such a loaded statement that Victor didn’t know how to respond to it. He knew they weren’t just talking about Jeremy’s lack of friends anymore. Before he could figure out what to say, Jeremy continued.

“You really are such a boy scout, aren’t you? Maybe I don’t need you and your equally perfect boyfriend trying to save me. I’m not some charity case.”

“Look, I’m sorry that I don’t feel the same way about you,” Victor said, as gently as he could. Jeremy stared at him like an animal with its back against a wall, a trapped, furious hurt in his eyes. “And I’m sorry that you’re so alone. But you don’t have to be. If you could just stop lashing out all the time and pushing everyone away, you might actually find some people who like you for who you are. I’m not going to pretend that we’re friends now, not after the way you tried to hurt me, but I meant it when I told you before that I care what happens to you. I _do_ care, and even though you keep treating him like shit, Benji cares, too.”

Victor held out the papers in his hand, the pamphlets and the lists of resources. Jeremy stared at them blankly without reaching for them.

“He got you these. They’re all organizations and stuff that might be able to help you,” Victor explained.

Jeremy continued to just stand there, looking at Victor’s outstretched hand, his brows drawn together in confusion. “Why would he do that?”

“Because his life isn’t perfect either. Neither is mine. Everyone needs help sometimes, Jeremy. Trust me, I know how hard it is to ask for it, but it’s totally worth it.”

As he said it, Victor thought about everyone who had helped him come as far as he had. He might not have ever gotten up the courage to accept himself and come out if he hadn’t had so many other people supporting him: Simon and Bram, Justin, Ivy, and Kim, Felix, Pilar, Jake, Benji. And who did Jeremy have in his corner, rooting for him? From what Victor could see, there was no one. Not unless Jeremy could finally overcome his fear and learn how to reach out to someone.

After a long moment of standing there contemplating what Victor was offering, Jeremy finally moved forward, his hand closing around the papers. He stared down at them for a long moment, and Victor felt a surge of hope, that maybe, somehow, he’d finally found a way through Jeremy’s defenses. That maybe Jeremy had really listened to him this time.

But then Jeremy’s hand clenched around them, the paper crunching in his fist, and a second later he tossed them to the ground, where they lay scattered across the muddy gravel.

“Don’t ever try and lecture me like this again,” he ground out. “Just stay the fuck away from me.”

“Jeremy, wait-” Victor called out.

The hostile, caged look in Jeremy’s eyes was enough to stop Victor from trying to follow him. He simply stood there and watched as the other boy stormed away.

Once Jeremy had walked around the building and out of sight, he bent down and began to pick up the papers, carefully brushing away the dirt. His failure settled leaden and cold in his gut. When he walked up to his truck a few minutes later, Benji was there, leaning against the side of it, waiting for him.

“How did it go?”

Victor waved the stained, crumpled papers at him, his shoulders sagging. “I screwed up. I’m sorry. I really tried, but he just wouldn’t listen to me.”

“It’s okay, Victor. We knew that was a possibility, right? But we had to at least try.” Despite the words of reassurance, there was something in Benji’s voice that had Victor searching his face for some sign of what was bothering him.

“Are you pissed? That I suggested talking with him alone?”

Benji sighed and shook his head. “No, of course not. Well, I’m not pissed at you anyway.”

“So it’s just Jeremy you’re mad at?”

“Yeah. I mean, how is it possible to feel bad for someone and also dislike them so much at the same time?” Benji asked in exasperation. “The way he was looking at you, and then that smug little smirk he got on his face when you suggested going outside without me…

“Wait a minute,” Victor said slowly, “Are you saying you were jealous? I thought you weren’t the jealous type.”

“I’m not. Usually. I guess it’s just Jeremy getting under my skin.” Benji paused for a moment, looking awkward, and then asked, “He didn’t, like, try to kiss you again did he?”

“He did not,” Victor confirmed, and couldn’t help smiling at the relief in Benji’s eyes. “And if he ever does try to do that again I promise I will kick him in the kneecap before he gets anywhere near me.”

Benji leaned over, bumping his shoulder into Victor’s. “Okay. Good. I mean, you know I trust you. It’s just Jeremy that I don’t trust to not be a complete asshole whenever possible.”

“He is definitely an asshole,” Victor agreed, “but it’s not like there’s no reason for it. He’s been through a lot.”

“Yeah. You’re right. And we’re not giving up on this, okay? Just because he wouldn’t listen today, doesn’t mean we might not be able to convince him next time.”

Victor didn’t feel as sure about that, considering he’d been the one to actually try talking to Jeremy that day only to be shot down hard, but the situation was too serious to just forget about. Jeremy was so used to other people ignoring him or giving up on him, and maybe it would take someone refusing to do that to finally convince him that his life mattered.

Benji had to work a closing shift at Brasstown, so Victor gave him a ride over to the cafe, and then he headed back to his own house. It was quiet when he got there and a note in the kitchen informed him that Isabel had taken Adrian grocery shopping with her. Pilar must have been out with her friends or something, so for once Victor had the house to himself. It was the only day that week that he didn’t have basketball practice – they were putting in extra time to prepare for the game on Saturday – so he spent a little while trying to catch up on homework and thinking about what a shame it was that this opportunity for alone time with Benji was going to waste all because Benji had to work. As he was finishing up a math assignment, he glanced over toward the window and his eye caught on the walkie-talkie sitting on the shelf near his bed.

“Felix, you there? Over.”

A few minutes went by with no response, so Victor tried one more time, and then he was rewarded by Felix’s voice coming through.

“Hey, man, what’s up? Over.”

“You busy?” There was a long pause with no answer, and then Victor rolled his eyes and said, “Over.”

“Nope,” Felix responded immediately. “I thought I’d be hanging out with Lake this afternoon but she just canceled on me. Apparently her mom got off work early and insisted on a spa day or something? So, the point is, I am _muy_ _un-occupied-o_. Over.”

Victor cringed. “Uh, that’s really not how you say that… How did you even pass your first year of Spanish? Anyway, if you’re not doing anything, wanna come over? Uh, over.”

“Hey, I’ll have you know that I got an ‘ _excelente_ ’ on my last quiz, thank you very much. And yeah, I’ll be there in ten. Over.”

Felix arrived five minutes later because he was Felix and they settled in with some snacks in the living room.

“What do you feel like doing?” Felix asked. “Video games? Netflix? Ooh, there’s this new documentary that just came out about UFO’s that I’ve been meaning to watch-”

“Uh, how about just some video games for now?” Victor suggested. The truth was, he had an ulterior motive for inviting Felix over, which was to finally try and get Felix to open up to him about how things were going with his mom. There was a better chance he’d be able to spark a conversation while they played some game than there was in the middle of one of Felix’s weird documentaries.

“So, it must be a relief to have your Aunt Cathy around these days,” Victor said as they started up Mario Party. “Has she figured out how long she’ll be able to stay yet?”

“Oh, uh, she’s actually thinking about making some arrangements for her apartment to be leased out temporarily, so that she’ll be able to stay here as long as we need her. I wasn’t really expecting her to stay longer than a couple of weeks, so yeah, it’s pretty great that she’s sticking around for now. I think having her here is really cheering Mom up.” Before Victor could respond to this or try and ask a follow up question about Lisa, Felix continued quickly, “How about you guys? It must be super weird not having your dad here. Are you doing okay?”

Victor bit back the urge to sigh at Felix deflecting as usual and answered honestly, “It _is_ really weird. I keep thinking he’s just at work or something and he’ll be home soon, but… I haven’t seen him at all since Monday. I guess he must have come to pick up his stuff while we were all at school.”

“That really sucks, man.”

“Yeah, it does.” Victor worked hard to banish any thoughts of Armando from his mind for the moment. As he waited for Felix to take his turn, he asked, “So you said Cathy’s been cheering your mom up? Does that mean she’s been doing better lately?”

“Uh huh, much better than before,” Felix answered vaguely, and then groaned when his character rolled a one and proceeded to lose three coins on the next space. “Aw, really? Come _on_.”

Victor shook his head. “That’s what you get for picking Yoshi again.”

“Can I help it if he’s completely adorable?”

The next mini-game started up and Victor was briefly distracted for a few minutes by his competitive streak kicking in. After wiping the floor with Felix, he remembered that he was supposed to be engaging in a sensitive conversation with him, and paused the game under the pretense of drinking some water. He took a sip and then cautiously asked, “So, um… did your mom make any progress with all that stuff at your house? Like, making it a little more comfortable for you guys?”

“Well, uh, we’re – we’re working on it. You know, baby steps. The psychiatrist said we shouldn’t try to rush her.” Felix shifted uncomfortably. “So! You’ll never guess who I saw Matt with at the Brandon Commons yesterday!”

Victor couldn’t manage to hold back his sigh that time. “Felix. Come on.”

Felix turned to him with a very unconvincing expression of confusion. “What?”

“You _know_ what. Every time I try to talk to you about your mom lately you just brush me off, or change the topic, or pretend like everything is fine. When are you going to tell me how things really are? Like you promised you would?”

“Did you lure me over here just so we could have a heart to heart?”

Victor turned on his puppy dog eyes. He knew for a fact that they were one of the best weapons in his arsenal. “Would you be annoyed if I said yes?”

With a groan of defeat, Felix said, “Okay, fine. You win. But – if I’m going to tell you about what’s going on with me, then you have to do the same. This morning Pilar mentioned some work trip you went on with Benji last weekend, which involved _spending the night together_ _at a motel_. I am your _best friend_ , Victor, how did I not hear all about that yet? Not to mention the fact that you’ve hardly said anything about why your dad left or how you feel about it.”

There was a guilty feeling settling in Victor’s stomach, but he ignored it for the moment and said, “This better not just be you trying to distract me again by getting me to talk about my own stuff. That would be some Grade A Felix deflection right there.”

“Oh, and you think I don’t see what you’re doing?” Felix returned.

“What are you talking about?”

“The whole Victor Salazar Fixer routine. You’re trying to solve all of my problems so you don’t have to feel so worried about your own. Dude, I bet you’ve been doing that all week, haven’t you? Trying extra hard to take care of everybody else?”

Victor stared back at him, stuck at an impasse, with no way forward except to admit that Felix was absolutely correct.

Felix just nodded a little smugly. “Yep. That’s what I thought.”

Rolling his eyes, Victor said, “Okay, so maybe neither of us has really been sharing much lately and we should both talk about what’s going on with us, but… You first.”

“Ugh, all right, already. Has anyone ever told you that you can be really aggressive when you’re trying to be nice?”

“No, because most people just _let me be nice to them_ ,” Victor pointed out dryly. “So? How are things? Really?”

“They’re… well, I wasn’t lying when I said things are getting better, but… it’s still hard.” Felix dropped his controller on the coffee table, giving up on the now forgotten video game. One of his feet was tapping out a rapid beat against the floor. “Having Aunt Cathy here is, uh, kind of a mixed blessing, to be honest. She’s super helpful, don’t get me wrong – she’s been taking over a lot of the stuff that I was doing, like the cleaning and grocery shopping and whatever, which is great ‘cause I finally have some time to get more homework done and hang out with Lake. And I think Mom really is happy to spend some time with her sister. The problem is that I’m pretty sure Mom is also really embarrassed about needing Cathy’s help, and about people finding out what our house is like. Even though she’s been doing a little better since she started therapy, she still gets so withdrawn sometimes, probably because Cathy has such a big personality and it can be exhausting after a while, and because of how bad she feels about everything that’s going on.”

“Yeah. I get how accepting help from others can actually be pretty tough sometimes,” Victor said, thinking of himself, Jeremy, Felix… even his parents had waited until their marriage was already at a breaking point before starting counseling. “I guess it’s just the vulnerability of letting other people see you struggling that’s so hard. Maybe we all feel this pressure to, like, hide the parts of our lives that aren’t perfect.”

Felix nodded, slow and thoughtful. “Everybody’s got something like that, don’t they. Even the people that seem the most perfect to us.”

For a moment Victor remembered that night at Mia’s stoplight party when he’d been so surprised to find Benji drunk and miserable and in the midst of breaking down. Up until then, Benji had been nothing but cool and confident, this person that Victor couldn’t stop himself from idealizing a little even as he was desperately trying to ignore how attracted he was to him. It seemed contradictory but somehow Benji’s imperfections had only made Victor want him more. From the look on Felix’s face, he seemed to be lost in some memory as well, but then he glanced up at Victor with a small smile.

“You know, the other day when I came home from school, Mom was actually out of bed,” Felix continued. “Her and Cathy were out in the kitchen trying to figure out how to make this pie that their mom used to make them when they were kids. That never would have happened a month ago… so, yeah, she is actually starting to get better. It’s just a slow process. The, uh, the psychiatrist is trying out some new medications for her, and I guess it can take a while for them to start working the way they’re supposed to. Apparently a lot of ups and downs at the beginning is normal.”

Victor nodded. “That makes sense. What about the stuff you told me about before? How you were worried the social worker might try to separate you guys?”

“Diane – that social worker from the hospital – has been checking in with us, but she seems okay with things now that Aunt Cathy is planning to stay longer, so I guess I don’t really need to worry about that anymore.”

“That’s amazing,” Victor said, patting Felix on the shoulder.

He was surprised when Felix just stared off into the middle-distance and began to blink rapidly, a sure sign that he was fighting off tears.

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s great, it’s just-” Felix cut himself off as his voice broke slightly. “I can’t help worrying that all of this isn’t going to last. I mean, there have been a bunch of other times over the years when she’d get better for a while. She’d start cooking and cleaning again, sometimes she’d even start to get rid of some stuff, but then a few weeks later she’d hit another low and wouldn’t get out of bed for days. What’s gonna happen if Cathy can’t just stay here forever? I’m so scared that she might get worse again, that she might-”

He stopped talking altogether in order to rub angrily at his eyes. Felix had always been so stubborn about never letting anyone see him crying. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that he’d been bullied so much growing up. Victor had been on the receiving end of it occasionally, too, for being brown-skinned or for speaking Spanish or for coming from a family that sometimes struggled to make ends meet. But he’d never had to deal with it to the same extent that Felix had. For whatever reason, Felix had had a target on his back pretty much since kindergarten.

Victor put a hand on Felix’s shoulder and dragged him into a hug, holding on until he felt Felix relax against him. It sounded like he’d stopped crying already, but Victor knew from experience that just because Felix wasn’t showing his hurt it didn’t mean it wasn’t still there.

“I almost lost her,” Felix mumbled. “I still don’t know if what happened in December was on purpose or not. She won’t tell me anything about it. I just – I don’t ever want that to happen again-”

It was hard to know what to say to that, so Victor just held on tight to him. When Felix eventually pulled away and wiped his face off on his sleeve, he seemed a little calmer than before.

“Hey, things are different now from those other times, right? This time you have your aunt here to help out, and you have a doctor who is working hard to make things better,” Victor pointed out. “You have me, now that I actually know what’s going on, and you have Lake, too. You don’t have to try and deal with this on your own anymore.”

“Thanks,” Felix said, giving Victor a small but genuine smile. “I know I’m pretty bad at accepting help sometimes, but… I’ll try to get better at it. Maybe you were right, I did need to get some of that off my chest.”

“See? Next time don’t fight me so hard when I’m trying to be aggressively nice to you.”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s your turn now.” Felix took a moment to pull himself back together, his shoulders visibly relaxing as he let go of some of the tension that had been wound tight inside of him. Although Victor could see that Felix was donning his overly cheerful persona again, it felt less forced now, more like a way to cheer himself up rather than Victor. Felix waggled his brows. “Tell me all the deets about this little work trip you went on with Benji.”

“Uh…” Victor said, flushing.

Felix laughed. “Okay, maybe not _all_ the details… but I need my fix of this week’s episode of the Victor Salazar Telenovela. We’re still workshopping that name, by the way. What do you think of _Days of our Salazars_? _All My Victors_? No? Okay, how about-”

Victor rolled his eyes. “Seriously, just stop now before you somehow say anything even more ridiculous.”

“You know I like a challenge,” Felix answered. “Okay, seriously, though. What’s been going on with you?”

So Victor told him about the work trip, how good it had been to spend a day with Benji without having to worry about any of the usual drama in their lives, and maybe skipped over the parts that Felix didn’t really need to know about. Felix raised his brows, clearly aware of what Victor was omitting.

“Hey, don’t feel like you have to hold back if you actually want to talk about that stuff,” Felix interrupted. “I mean, I told you about me and Lake, right? There’s no need to be embarrassed about it, I promise you’re not going to make me uncomfortable or anything. Actually… you know, ever since you came out to me I’ve been doing some research so that I can be a better ally to you and-”

“Wait a minute, research?” Victor asked, with a sinking feeling in his stomach. “What kind of research?”

“You know, like research into gay stuff. How to be a good ally. All about the different types of sexual and gender identities. Queer culture. Activism. And, uh, I may have done _a tiny bit_ of reading about how gay sex works, just in case you ever needed to talk about it.”

“Oh my god.”

“Well, I want to be here for you!” Felix said, a little defensively. “This is like this whole big thing in your life that you’ve been struggling with on your own for so long, and I had no clue about it, so I’m trying to do better. Anyway. I am pretty well-versed in gay stuff now.”

“I – I don’t even know what to say to that.” Victor couldn’t tell if he felt more touched by the effort Felix had made or more concerned about the fact that _Felix_ probably knew more about gay things than he did. “I mean, thanks, I guess? That’s actually really cool of you. But, uh… I’m good for now.”

He told Felix about what had happened with Father Hurtado and his parents’ argument on Monday instead, and tried to explain how he felt about his dad leaving. It was hard when he wasn’t even entirely sure himself, given all of the mixed emotions that the incident had awakened in him – guilt, sadness, fear, anger… He’d discussed it with Jake at therapy the day before as well, but he still felt like he had no idea how to make sense of it all. Even so, by the time they heard a key rattling in the lock followed by Isabel and Adrian coming home, Victor was feeling a little less weighed down by all of it.

Later that evening, Felix had gone home and Victor was getting some more homework done when he got a message from Simon asking if he was free to Facetime.

“Hey!” Simon said, answering right away when Victor called him. He seemed to be sitting in the living room of his apartment with Bram, both of them grinning widely and waving.

“Victor! Congratulations!” Bram called out. “We are so proud of you, man!”

Victor found himself grinning back at them. “Thanks, guys.”

“So, we know things are still pretty complicated for you, but coming out to your family is a big deal, and that deserves to be celebrated. If you were here in New York with us, we’d totally take you out to Messy Boots for the best party of your life, but since you’re still stuck out there in Texas, we’ll just have to find another way to bring the show to you,” Simon said. He and Bram lifted up a couple of glasses of white wine, and suddenly Kim and Ivy were popping up in the background, leaning over the back of the sofa with drinks of their own. Simon lifted his a little higher and shouted, “To Victor!”

“To Victor!” the others cheered.

Before Victor could respond to this with more than just a startled laugh, the camera swiftly swung around to reveal Justin in a sparkling white jumpsuit with a silver belt around the waist and a white fur coat draped over his shoulders. He had a microphone in one hand and with the other he pointed straight at the camera, which moved in a little closer on his perfectly applied make up, every swirl and line of it bold and eye-catching and most of it shimmering with glitter.

“Wow,” Victor breathed out in shock.

“This one goes out to you, darling,” Justin told Victor, and as soon as he finished speaking the lights dimmed and a woman’s voice began to sing. Justin struck a pose and flawlessly lip-synched the words, “I’m… coming out.”

In the background Victor could hear cheers and catcalls, and he couldn’t stop himself from laughing half in disbelief and half in delight as Justin repeated the refrain again to the sound of the upbeat rhythm. He began striding dramatically around the living room, trailing a hand over Simon’s face one minute and then grabbing Ivy by the hand and twirling her around the next.

“I’m coming out, I want the world to know, got to let it show,” Justin sang, again and again, dancing his way around to the front of the sofa where he draped himself across Bram’s lap. Bram tried to lip-synch along with him to the next part, but he kept getting interrupted by a fresh burst of giggles.

“There’s a new me coming out, and I just had to live, and I wanna give,” Bram and Justin mouthed, “I’m completely positive, I think this time around, I am gonna do it, like you never knew it. Oooh, I’ll make it through!”

Justin leaned up to press a kiss to Bram’s cheek only to be smacked playfully by Simon who had finally had enough of seeing Justin in his boyfriend’s lap. Simon grabbed a pillow from the corner of the sofa and started swinging it in Justin’s direction, who jumped up and ran away to safety behind Kim.

Victor was laughing so hard now there were tears in his eyes, and his heart was so giddy with happiness that he felt like he was drunk. He watched in fascination as Justin leaned back against Kim’s chest and sang the next part of the song up to them, reaching up to wrap one of their curls around his finger.

“The time has come for me to break out of the shell.” He took a step forward, shrugging off the fur coat and flinging it aside as he sang along with the next lines. “I have to shout, that I’m coming out!”

Bram lunged forward quickly to catch the coat and there was another round of cheers as Justin went right into the chorus again, everyone else singing along with him now, “I’m coming out, I want the world to know, got to let it show!”

The performance worked its way up to a grand finale involving a complicated dance routine with a lot of twists and turns punctuated by applause and whistles from the audience, finally ending in Justin leaning in close to the camera with a bright smile and lip-synching the chorus one last time.

The warmth and happiness filling Victor up to bursting felt like the glass of champagne he’d been allowed at his family’s New Year’s Eve party a year ago, golden and bright and bubbling. By the time it finished he was wiping away genuine tears from his eyes, and not just from how much he’d been laughing and grinning through the entire thing. The joy and the gratitude he felt, the sense of connection – it was too big to be contained, too big to belong only to Victor. It was something they were all making together. Something that belonged to all of them.

“Thank you so much,” Victor told them a little breathlessly, maybe a little choked up, when he could finally speak again.

Everyone crowded around the camera, Simon shouting “We love you, Victor!”, Kim blowing him a kiss, Ivy and Justin cheering loudly, and Bram calling out, “Yeah, kiss that closet goodbye, honey!”

This was what Simon had meant before when he’d said that Victor was one of them; that they were family. He thought about what he’d told Benji last weekend, about how being gay had always felt like such a lonely, isolating thing, and realized that it didn’t feel that way now. This part of him didn’t always have to be something that marked him out as different, that drove others away – it could be something that was shared, that brought him closer to those who were like him. In that moment he felt so connected and loved and – proud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title comes from a line in the song "I'm Coming Out" by Diana Ross, the same song Justin performs at the end. The outfit she wears in [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvJH3oUkFrg) performance is the one that inspired Justin's white jumpsuit and (let's assume fake) fur coat.


	33. Real Love Is Tough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: homophobia, brief ableist and racist language
> 
> The title comes from a line in Tegan and Sara's song "Faint of Heart".

On Friday morning, Victor arrived at school early in order to find a good spot to lurk in the hallway near the music room. He leaned against the wall pretending to be busy with his phone, a break in the row of lockers providing a small alcove where he was hoping he’d be less noticeable. He had to wait until nearly the time that the bell rang before Jeremy finally showed up to grab a few textbooks and then trudge away to class. Now that he knew which locker was Jeremy’s, he rushed up to it and stuffed the papers, a little wrinkled and mud-stained but still perfectly legible, through the slot in the metal, and then hurried away to his own first period class.

The French classroom was in a completely different part of the school, so of course he was late, and he silently cursed Jeremy for arriving so last minute when his teacher forced him to apologize in French for his tardiness in front of everyone.

“ _Je suis désolé d'être en_ _tarde_ ,” Victor said, and didn’t realize until Ms. Collins corrected him and everyone snickered that he’d accidentally used the Spanish word for late rather than the French one.

Tom Davis’ younger brother, Joe, was sitting up near the front row, and coughed out the word “retard” with English pronunciation just to be an offensive asshole, which Victor was starting to think was a defining character trait of all the Davises. Victor slunk away to his usual seat next to Matt while Ms. Collins proceeded to tell Joe off for his inappropriate language.

“Ignore him,” Matt whispered, giving Victor a sympathetic look. “That dude just cannot pass up an opportunity to be a dick.”

About halfway through the class they were told to form groups of four for a speaking activity, so Matt and Victor ended up working with Alicia and Kylie, the painfully shy girl that Alicia usually sat next to in French. When Victor sat down in the chair directly across from Kylie, she took one look at him, blushed, and continued to stare fixedly down at her lap from that point on.

“So, what exactly are we supposed to be doing?” Matt asked. He was just barely keeping up a passing grade in the class because of his complete lack of interest in the subject and had a bad habit of spacing out whenever Ms. Collins was talking.

Alicia shook her head, but one side of her mouth was curling up into a smile. “ _T_ _u es un mauvais élève._ ”

“Hey, you think I don’t know when I’m being insulted? If I’m such a bad student, then how did I just understand what you said?”

“That’s, like, freshman year basic French,” Alicia pointed out. “Impress me next time by actually knowing what _Ms. Collins_ said.”

Matt leaned forward a little, eyes locked on Alicia’s and a teasing smile spreading slowly across his face. “Who says I want to impress you?”

“Are you saying you don’t?” Alicia returned.

As far as Victor knew, the weird sexual tension vibes he was picking up on from his friends had never existed between them before. They were starting to make him feel like a third wheel despite the fact that technically there was a fourth person at the table. It was easy to forget that, though, when Kylie refused to make eye contact or otherwise acknowledge Victor’s existence in any way other than blushing.

“So, uh, how about that activity we’re supposed to be doing?” Victor cut in. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Ms. Collins beginning to wander in their direction, observing each group’s work on her way around the room. He set the papers they’d been given down in the middle of the table and quickly explained to Matt what they were meant to do. “We have to read about the personalities of these people on the cards, and then we’re supposed to make a seating chart for a dinner party based on who would probably like to sit together.”

Matt stared at him blankly. “Are you joking? That’s the gayest thing I’ve ever heard.”

It wasn’t like it was the first time Matt had called something gay in a derogatory sense. Victor was used to hearing people say it all the time, pretty much every single day really, so the sudden clenching in his gut took him by surprise.

“How is a speaking activity gay?” Victor snapped before he even realized what he was doing. Matt stared at him in shock.

“Uh, I don’t know, because it is? Why’re you so pissed off all of a sudden?”

“Maybe because that’s a shitty thing to say.”

Alicia nodded. “Victor’s right, Matt, you shouldn’t use the word gay like it’s an insult. That’s pretty homophobic.”

Being reprimanded by Alicia caused an angry flush to darken Matt’s cheeks, and he looked away from her to glare furiously in Victor’s direction. “What does it matter? Your new gay best friend isn’t even here right now, so who’s going to give a shit?”

Victor knew he should probably drop it before their argument escalated further, but his temper was getting the best of him. “It’s not about Benji. It’s about you being an ignorant jerk.”

“So, what? Now calling something gay makes me a bigot? I’m not homophobic, dude, chill the fuck out already. It’s just something that people say.”

“Yeah, like how ‘go back to Mexico’ is just something that people say, right?” Victor shot back.

“What the fuck?” Matt said, recoiling in surprise at Victor’s reference to what had happened at a basketball game last fall. When Matt had pissed off a member of the other team, the guy had snarled that at him and the whole thing had nearly ended in a fistfight. They’d both grown up hearing variations of that from time to time, despite the fact that Matt’s family had been living in Texas for generations, since the days when Texas was actually part of Mexico, and Victor’s family wasn’t Mexican at all.

He and Matt had never really been that close, even though they’d been eating lunch with the same group for years and spent a lot of time together for basketball. Aside from liking sports and being Latino, they didn’t actually have very much in common, so their interactions had always been fairly superficial. It was strange now to be suddenly caught up in such an emotional argument with him.

“They’re not even close to being the same thing,” Matt ground out, his voice loud enough to catch the attention of some of the other students sitting nearby. “There’s a huge freaking difference between someone actively trying to be a racist piece of shit and me just saying some dumb assignment is gay.”

“How?” Victor demanded. More people were turning to look at them now, but he just couldn’t make himself back down from this. “How is one prejudice any worse than another?”

“Why do you care so much about this? People say it _all the time_ , dude, it’s a normal thing to say. Stop making it into such a big deal.”

“Gentlemen, please save this discussion for another time,” Ms. Collins said as she approached them. Glancing down at their worksheet, she frowned in disappointment. “I see you still haven’t made any progress on the activity you’re meant to be working on right now. Let’s get back to it, and _parle français s'il vous plait._ ”

A tense silence followed their teacher’s departure to another part of the room, until finally Alicia sighed and suggested that Matt work with her on reading half of the cards and organizing them, while handing the other half over to Victor and Kylie. Trying to work with Kylie felt like pulling teeth at first, since she would hardly speak more than a couple of words to him at a time, but at least she seemed to have a decent grasp of French and they worked their way quietly through the cards faster than Matt and Alicia did. Ms. Collins came around again to remind them that they were supposed to be discussing the seating chart with each other in French, not just sitting there in almost complete silence, and Kylie took the opportunity to ask if she could be excused to the bathroom.

“It’s pretty hard to do any speaking practice when Kylie won’t even talk to me,” Victor grumbled once she had left the room. He and Alicia were doing most of the work now to fill in their chart, while Matt leaned back in his chair and acted like Victor didn’t exist.

“She’s not usually this quiet,” Alicia said, giving Victor a meaningful look. “She just gets shy around people she likes.”

Matt rolled his eyes and said snidely, “Maybe if you weren’t so worried about gay stuff you’d notice when a cute girl has a crush on you. Unless Jeremy was right and gay stuff is what you’re into now?”

Victor’s heart rate picking up to a thundering pace was the only warning he got before he found himself opening his mouth and saying, “Maybe it is.”

“What?” Matt said, eyes going wide and mouth dropping open a little. Alicia looked equally stunned.

“Victor, are you – are you saying you’re-” Alicia stammered awkwardly.

There was a swooping sensation in his stomach, the way he imagined it would feel if you stepped off a ledge by accident and suddenly found yourself falling. His bad habit of speaking without thinking first had gotten him into a lot of trouble in the past, but this might have been its biggest slip up ever. Still, he’d basically just told them, and he’d already done the hardest part of all of this by coming out to his parents, so Victor dredged up some courage from somewhere within the huge pool of anxiety filling him and said it.

“I’m gay,” Victor admitted quietly, although clearly not quiet enough judging by the way the girls at the table near theirs began immediately whispering to each other.

“Oh,” Alicia said, struggling past her surprise to find a smile. “Oh, Victor, that’s great. It’s so brave of you to tell us.”

“Are you serious?” Matt asked, and when Victor nodded, he became tense and silent, slouching back even further in his chair away from Victor.

For the rest of the lesson, Matt didn’t speak a word to him, even after they returned to their own table when the activity was finished. All around the room, people were turning in their seats to stare at Victor, or leaning over to whisper to a classmate, and Victor tried his best not to let them see how scared he was feeling. He couldn’t get past the sinking feeling that he’d just rushed into something blindly that maybe he should’ve been more careful about, but he tried to remind himself that this was what he was planning to do eventually anyway. He wanted to be out, completely out, in every part of his life now. He was so sick of the lying and hiding and pretending to be someone he wasn’t. Even so, every stare and every murmuring voice had him on edge, wondering if he was really ready for what he’d just thrown himself into.

By lunchtime, word had obviously spread through the whole school, based on the way everyone was looking at Victor and talking in low voices when he passed by in the hall. No one had said anything to him directly, unless you counted some random guy from the wrestling team that wolf whistled at him just to make his buddies laugh. Victor was constantly expecting something to happen, though, which led to his anxiety hitting some record highs as he walked toward the cafeteria. He paused before going inside, panicking at the thought of being surrounded by all of those people who _knew_ about him now, who might say something humiliating or try do something to him. Just as he was about to turn tail and run off to eat lunch in his truck, he felt someone’s hand on his arm, and nearly jumped straight out of his skin.

“Whoah, Victor, it’s just me,” Benji said, pulling his hand away quickly. He glanced around with a worried expression and Victor followed his gaze, noticing that everyone headed into the cafeteria was staring openly at them. A couple of girls giggled, and another one actually got out her phone and seemed to snap a photo of them. Benji’s mouth tightened in irritation. He nodded his head in the opposite direction, toward the hallway that led to the parking lot. “Let’s get out of here.”

They didn’t talk the entire way out to Victor’s truck, and even once they’d climbed into the cab and closed the doors the silence continued to stretch on. Victor could see people walking by, some of them glancing up at Victor and Benji in the car and staring a little too long.

“What happened today?” Benji finally asked. His tone of voice was odd. It seemed a little bit distant, a little cooler than usual. “Did you actually come out to everyone this morning?”

Victor nodded slowly. “Yeah… well, I didn’t really plan on it happening, but Matt was being a dick about something and we were arguing, and then it just kind of slipped out. I only meant to say it to him and Alicia, but I guess the people sitting nearby must have overheard me.”

“I thought you were going to wait,” Benji said. “When we talked on Monday, that’s what you told me. That you weren’t going to rush into anything.”

Everything about Benji’s body language was strange. The way he was holding himself so stiffly, and looking out the window instead of at Victor, and the hard set of his mouth. Victor’s already rapid heart rate sped up even faster.

“Are you mad at me for coming out today?”

The question seemed to crack the icy tension between them, as Benji turned quickly in his seat and met his eyes apologetically. His hand shot out to touch Victor’s as he said, “No, shit, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to act like I was angry, I just…”

They both jumped, Benji yanking his hand away from Victor, when a guy walking past thumped the hood of the truck loudly. The guy and his friend made gross hand gestures and then wandered off laughing while a sick feeling of rage and embarrassment turned Victor’s stomach.

“ _That’s_ why,” Benji said, jaw clenched, nodding after the guys. In his lap the hand that had reached out to comfort Victor was now curled into a fist. “I’m not angry, Victor, I’m… I’m _scared_ for you. I tried to warn you the other day that being out at this school wouldn’t be easy. That’s why I wanted you to wait a little longer, until things were better for you at home and you’d be able to deal with all of the crap that’s inevitably going to follow coming out here.”

“What kind of crap?” Victor asked him, and Benji looked away again, his brow furrowed, and didn’t answer right away. A cold fear began to creep up on him. “Benji, please. Just tell me.”

“The – the first few weeks after I got here were pretty rough. People hassled me a lot, mostly doing stupid stuff like what those guys just did, but some of it was more serious. It got better after that, at least until what happened at Homecoming. My mom had to fight pretty hard to make sure Tom Davis actually got suspended for what he did. The school was just going to let it go at first with nothing more than a couple of afternoon detentions. And since then people still give me shit sometimes, especially Davis and his friends, I guess because he’s still really pissed off about getting suspended. I try to just ignore it but it can be really hard. This school is nothing like my old one back in Atlanta.”

“But… Benji, all this time you seemed like you were okay.” Victor’s chest ached with anger and sympathy. He just wanted to wrap his arms around Benji to comfort him but he couldn’t, not here, not where everyone could see them. “Did anyone else try to hurt you? Physically?”

Benji chewed on his bottom lip, looking reluctant to answer the question, but eventually he said, “Nothing as bad as what Davis did. Just some minor stuff.”

There was a rage building up inside of Victor that made him want to break something. “Like what?”

“Just, like, people shoving me in the hallway, or, uh, some stuff that happened in P. E. A guy tripped me one time, and someone hit me with a stick when we were playing field hockey. Stuff like that.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me anything about this?” Victor asked, trying his hardest to keep his voice even but failing badly.

“I didn’t want to freak you out. Coming out has already been so hard for you, and you’ve had all this family drama going on at the same time, and then there was that stuff with Jeremy…” Benji sighed. “I guess I could just see how much you were struggling to accept yourself at first, and how you slowly started to get better and better, and I didn’t want to mess that up by scaring you.”

“I kind of get that, but-” Victor stopped, hesitating for a second, and then thought, _fuck it,_ and reached over to grab Benji’s hand. It wasn’t likely that anyone passing by would be able to see them anyway, but even if they did Victor didn’t care at that moment. “Please don’t keep stuff like that from me anymore. Even if there’s a bunch of stupid crap going on in my life, I still want to know what’s going on with you. I still want to be there for you when you need me, the same way you’ve done for me. Okay?”

Benji nodded, and although he wasn’t quite smiling, there was a warmth in his eyes when he looked back at Victor that had the last of that distance between them melting away.

“Okay,” Benji promised.

They ended up sharing Victor’s homemade lunch in the truck, since neither of them felt like heading back into the school yet. It wasn’t really enough food for two people, but it didn’t matter. It was better than trying to deal with all of their fellow students in the cafeteria. He tried not to let himself worry too much about what would happen when he finally had to go back inside, but as the time grew closer his anxiety got steadily worse.

Benji seemed to be just as worried. He squeezed Victor’s hand before they got out of the car and said, “If anything happens today, just remember that it’s not really about you. It’s just people being assholes because it makes them feel bigger or stronger or whatever. I know how hard it is to brush it off and not take it personally, but you’ve come such a long way, Victor, and I know you can handle this.” He smiled, a little strained, but his voice was sure when he said, “And I’m here for you, if you need me. I love you.”

As Victor walked back into the building, those words felt like armor encasing him, and the way they made his heart swell felt like hope. It made him believe that Benji was right, that even if it was going to be hard, he was strong enough now to handle it. Throughout the rest of the day he carried that feeling with him, held it tightly around himself, and it guarded him against the whispers and the stares, the muttered insult from someone in his History class, the way his math teacher looked at him uncomfortably, the guy who bumped into him on purpose in the hallway. The fear was still there, like a block of ice in his chest, but somehow he made it through the day, and he didn’t fall apart, and he didn’t have to run away or hide or lie to anyone. He was out, and everyone knew, and he told himself that he was going to be okay over and over again until he almost started to believe it.

“I thought it was time for a new sign,” Isabel said, holding up a green section of posterboard with gold lettering spelling out Victor- in large shining letters with -ious in a smaller print underneath. In one corner was a glittery blob that Victor had to squint a little to identify as a Bronco head, representing the school’s mascot. It wasn’t her most creative effort, but it had been a pretty rough week, and the fact that she’d gone to the trouble of making it at all when she’d been obviously feeling so low was actually really sweet.

Victor pretended to be embarrassed, just because he knew she found that funny and said, deadpan, “I’m speechless.”

She rolled her eyes at his tone of voice, but she was smiling when she asked, “So what time did you say the game started today? Four?”

“Yep. I can drive myself over if you don’t feel like getting there early, though,” Victor said, kind of hoping she would agree to it so that he’d have some time at the school with his teammates before his family arrived. Victor had invented a family emergency yesterday afternoon to get out of practice, unable to stomach the idea of facing his teammates so soon after accidentally outing himself to the entire school. He was incredibly nervous about seeing them later that day, but he knew that he couldn’t avoid it forever.

But of course Isabel shook her head at him for even suggesting it. “And miss out on the warm ups? No way. Plus, it’s the first game of the new season, so you know what that means.”

It was a tradition in their house to celebrate the first game by going out for dinner afterward, but with everyone so down after Armando had left, Victor wasn’t expecting them to do it this time.

“Oh,” he said, a little surprised and touched. He shifted on his feet a bit nervously, wondering if it was too soon, but then decided to ask anyway. “Uh, actually, Felix and Benji are planning on coming to watch the game, too. Would it be cool if they joined us after?”

Isabel’s smile was somewhat forced, but she immediately said, “Of course! They’re more than welcome. I’m, um, I’m looking forward to getting to know Benji a little better.”

“Awesome, thanks,” Victor said, and was about to wander off to his room when Isabel called out, “Uh, Victor, just a second.”

She glanced toward the sliding glass door leading outside, probably checking to see if Pilar and Adrian were on their way back from feeding the animals yet. There was no sign of them.

“What’s up?” Victor asked.

It was hard to think of a time when he’d seen his mom look so uncomfortable or embarrassed. She was wringing her hands and shifting a little on her feet, but for all her discomfort she seemed determined to continue on with whatever it was she wanted to say.

“So, um… how long have you and Benji been dating?”

Victor fought back the urge to run away before this conversation could go any further in the direction Isabel wanted to take it. He was trying to be honest now, though, so he said, “About two months.”

Isabel’s eyes went wide. “Two _months_?”

Victor watched guiltily as she seemed to be running through the timeline in her head. Technically he hadn’t asked Benji to be his boyfriend until right before Christmas, but they’d basically been together since his break up with Mia in November, even if it hadn’t been official then.

She moved to sit down on the sofa, a little dazed. That sad, disappointed look was back again, the same one he’d seen when they’d talked in his room on Monday. She said softly, “I can’t believe you kept it a secret for so long.”

He sat down beside her. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t ready to tell you before.”

She nodded. “I know. It’s okay, it’s just… hard, knowing how much you had to hide. I’ve, uh, I’ve been doing some reading, actually. Online. Just some articles and things for parents of kids who are gay. It’s helped me a lot to understand some of what you’ve been going through but – well, I get that it’s different for everyone. It’d be nice if you could, um, tell me about it sometime. When you feel up to it.”

The fact that she’d been trying to learn about this stuff just to understand him better and be more supportive left Victor speechless for a moment. When he recovered, he said, “Okay. Sure, I can do that.”

“But, uh, what I wanted to talk to you about now is Benji,” she said, sounding weirdly nervous. “I’ve only met him a few times, and I didn’t know what he was to you before, but he seems like a really nice young man. I’m so glad that you found someone that makes you happy. And I have to say, he is _very_ cute.”

“ _Mami_ ,” Victor protested in mortification. “ _Por favor, no._ ”

“Okay, sorry.” Isabel laughed a bit, holding her hands up defensively, but then her discomfort returned in full force as she continued, “But, we, uh – we need to address the fact that you just stayed with him at a motel last weekend.”

Victor’s heart began to pound. He didn’t know where this was going but he was already afraid to find out.

“When I gave you permission to stay the night there, I didn’t know at the time that Benji was your boyfriend. If I had known, I don’t know if I would have been okay with that.” She sighed. “I get that this situation is complicated. Telling us wasn’t easy for you, and a lot of the fault for that is on your father and I. Even so, I have some concerns. First of all, I want to know if you and Benji are sexually active.”

This was possibly the most embarrassed Victor had ever been in his life. He groaned a little and said weakly, “ _Mami_ , please, do we have to do this?”

She gave him a stern look. “Yes, _mijo_ , we absolutely do.”

Victor’s face felt like it was on fire as he admitted, “Yeah. We are.”

“Okay.” Isabel nodded, not especially surprised by this information. “Then my next question is – are you two being safe? Do you, uh, know how to be safe with a boy?”

“Yes,” Victor answered, blushing hard. “To both things.”

“Okay, good,” Isabel said, appearing satisfied but still very awkward about the whole thing. “Look, Victor, it might have been a long time ago, but I do actually remember what it’s like to be a teenager. I know how exciting it is to get all caught up in another person for the first time. Just, please, promise me that you guys will keep being safe, and that if you have any questions about it you’ll talk to me? I don’t care how weird you feel about it, your safety is the number one priority. And let me make it clear right now that if any other work trips pop up, you are not to leave this town without my permission, got it?”

“ _Si, Mami._ ”

She pulled him into a quick side hug, one arm around his shoulders, and kissed his forehead. “Great. Love you, _mi lindo._ ”

“Love you, too,” Victor said, and then promptly ran away as fast as he could to the safety of his room before she could ask him any other personal questions.

Around three fifteen, Isabel, Victor, and his siblings piled into the car to head over to the school for the game. Isabel and Adrian were decked out in green and yellow as always, while Pilar made sure to distance herself as far as possible from any school spirit by dressing entirely in black. On the way over, Victor sent Benji a text in order to invite him to dinner, and also so that he’d have some kind of distraction from the anxiety that was growing worse and worse the closer they got to the school.

_So, B… how do you feel about going out for dinner with my family after the game??_

_Sorry to ask at the last minute but I didn’t know we were doing it until like forty minutes ago. It’ll just be us and my family and Felix, so hopefully not too awkward_

_Although looking at that list of people again, I realize that awkwardness is probably unavoidable_

Benji’s reply came a few minutes later, just as they were about to pull into the parking lot.

_Sounds good! How weird would it be if my dad joined us though? Sorry but he’s insisting on coming with me tonight_

_I think he misses going to Isaac’s games, so he’s trying to live vicariously through you now_ 😓😩

For a moment Victor silently debated whether to ask his mom right then or to wait and postpone the embarrassment for a while, but in the end he decided to just get it over with. “So, uh… Benji said his dad’s coming to the game. Do you think he could come to dinner with us, too?”

Isabel’s eyes went a little wide. “Oh. Well. Sure, I mean, the more the merrier.”

Her tone of voice and body language were completely unconvincing. Victor frowned. “Really?”

She drew in a breath and composed herself, and then nodded firmly. “Yes, really. It’ll be nice to meet him.”

“Wow, you guys have already progressed to the dinners with parents stage?” Pilar snarked. She leaned forward to poke Victor in the arm and he swatted her away automatically. “When’s the wedding?

Victor shot her a dark look before choosing to ignore her completely. He sent Benji a quick message to let him know that it was okay to invite his dad.

“Where are we going to dinner?” Adrian asked from the backseat. “Can we go to Olivia’s? I want pizza.”

“It’s Victor’s game, so I was going to let him choose this time,” Isabel said, parking the car.

“Victor, can we go to Olivia’s? _Please_?” Adrian begged.

Victor laughed, grateful for how normal the exchange was. It almost made it possible to forget for a minute about everything he was so worried about. “Sure, why not?”

Adrian cheered and hopped excitedly out of the car. The rest of them followed behind him at a more sedate pace. Before they got inside, Pilar put a hand on Victor’s arm and leaned into him, asking in a low voice, “Do you think everything will go okay tonight? I mean, after your big coming out yesterday?”

He shrugged and did his best not to reveal what a nervous wreck he was at that moment. “It’ll be fine,” he said, with all the confidence he could muster. Pilar saw right through it though and shot him a sympathetic look.

When they entered the gym, Victor split off from his family to head toward the locker room. Sweat dampened his palms and his stomach started twisting itself up into knots as he hesitated in front of the door. On the other side, he could hear his teammates' voices talking, the sound of someone laughing. _You got this,_ he mentally coached himself, _just go in there and act like everything is fine and maybe it actually will be._

He took a deep breath, walked into the room, and for just a second everything was normal. And then he saw it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry to throw yet another cliffhanger at you guys!! This was going to be all one chapter but it got way too long, and that was the best way to split it in two... Next one will be up soon though!


	34. Hold onto the Good Ones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: homophobia, use of homophobic slurs (including the "f" word), mild violence

When they entered the gym, Victor split off from his family to head toward the locker room. Sweat dampened his palms and his stomach started twisting itself up into knots as he hesitated in front of the door. On the other side, he could hear his teammates’ voices talking, the sound of someone laughing. _You got this,_ he mentally coached himself, _just go in there and act like everything is fine and maybe it actually will be._

He took a deep breath, walked into the room, and for just a second everything was normal. And then he saw it.

In the center of his locker, someone had spray painted a crude drawing of a dick in white paint that stood out starkly against the dark green metal, with a homophobic slur written sloppily underneath. Victor stopped abruptly and just stared at it for a long moment, too shocked to even react. His eyes moved over the letters of the word over and over, trapped in the messy lines and angles that spelled out with awful clarity the depths of someone’s hatred for him; for what he was. With each pass it felt like those letters were being carved into his skin.

It was still a little early, so only about half of the guys on the team were in the room, but the ones who were there were either eagerly watching for Victor’s reaction or trying to steadfastly ignore what was happening. Kieran and Teddy were in the first category, unsurprisingly, their barely restrained laughter amplified by the quiet of the room, but what cut deeper than their jeering faces was the sight of Matt standing at his own locker with his back turned to all of them, willfully oblivious to what his teammates were doing to Victor.

As the shock wore off, a rage so strong it felt incandescent flared up inside of him. His hands clenched into fists tight enough to feel the bite of fingernails digging into his palms as he locked eyes with Kieran and Teddy, the most likely culprits.

“What the hell is that?” he snapped.

Teddy shrugged, struggling to keep a straight face. “What, you don’t like it? We heard you were batting for the other team these days, so…”

Victor stormed over to him, getting right up into Teddy’s face as he demanded, “Did you do it?”

All humor instantly lost, Teddy’s hands slammed into Victor’s shoulders, pushing him back hard as he shouted, “ _Back off, faggot._ ”

The force of the shove had Victor stumbling backward, but he managed to catch himself at the last second with a hand against the wall. He quickly righted himself, turning to face Teddy and Kieran who no longer seemed to find the situation so amusing. Even though Victor had never in his life punched someone for real, he felt like he might do it then; he was so incredibly furious with both of them and so humiliated by what they’d done, by what Teddy had just called him.

“ _Did you do it?_ ” he repeated, voice loud enough now to fill the otherwise silent room. Some part of his mind that wasn’t completely focused on the two guys in front of him was aware of the fact that Matt still had his back turned, as if to make it perfectly clear that Victor was on his own. As much as that betrayal stung, Victor was too angry to back down, even if it meant going up against both Kieran and Teddy on his own. He pushed away from the wall, crossing the distance between himself and Teddy, his whole body nearly vibrating with the need to lash out at him.

“Why? You want a matching one for your other locker?” Teddy sneered, staring Victor down. “Stop acting like you’re not into it. Everybody knows how much you like dick now.”

“ _Fuck you!_ ” Victor exploded, and probably would have tried to hit Teddy then if a hand hadn’t caught hold of his arm at just that moment.

Victor immediately wrenched his arm free, spinning to face the person who had just grabbed him, and found Andrew there staring back at him in surprise with his hands held up in his defense.

“Whoah, calm down, man,” Andrew said. “I’m just trying to help, okay?”

He stepped forward, standing shoulder to shoulder with Victor, and his expression darkened as he focused on Teddy and Kieran. “It looks like you two owe Salazar here an apology,” he said, in his usual slow, calm way of speaking, but there was an underlying threat audible in the words that no one missed.

It was hard to believe that Andrew, who had never really liked Victor much and had even actively _disliked_ him at times, was the only one among his teammates to stand up for him. More of them had begun to show up in the last few minutes, but they were mostly hovering awkwardly in the doorway. Some of them were whispering to each other or laughing quietly at the sight of the ugly drawing. Victor was grateful for Andrew’s support, somewhere deep down under the fury that was currently taking up almost all of his attention.

“Like fuck we do,” Teddy said, his eyes full of a hatred that felt as visceral as a slap. “We don’t want any queers on this team, Salazar, so that means you have to go. Tell Coach Harris you quit or else we’ll make your life miserable until you do.”

Victor was too stunned and hurt by the threat to even respond at first, but Andrew stepped in. He crossed his arms over his chest, towering over Teddy and proving just how intimidating he was when he wanted to be.

“Oh, and you two clowns think this team has any chance of winning without Victor? Have you _seen_ yourselves? Before he signed up last year, how many games did we win?” He paused, letting that question sink in while Teddy and Kieran’s faces flushed with humiliation. “ _Zero_. If you pressure Victor into quitting, you can bet that’s how many we’ll be winning for the rest of the year. Especially because if he quits, then I do, too, and you guys aren’t worth shit without the two of us.”

Victor’s mouth dropped open a little in surprise, but Andrew didn’t look at him, just continued to stare down Teddy and Kieran as they glared silently back at him.

“Whoah, whoah, what is all this talk of quitting? Who’s quitting?” Coach Harris shouted as he entered the room. He stopped dead as he took in the graffiti on Victor’s locker, his pale face going ruddy in an instant. “What the hell am I looking at?” A couple of guys snorted at the question, but quickly shut up when Coach Harris looked around wildly at all of them. “You guys think this kind of thing is _funny_? I hope whoever is responsible for that little piece of of crap drawing realizes that there are some pretty hefty fines associated with defacement of school property, not to mention the fact that anyone stupid enough to go after one of their own teammates like that is going to find themselves benched for the rest of the damn season, if they don’t end up off the team completely.”

No one responded to this, most of the guys merely staring down at the floor sullenly. Teddy visibly tensed up at the mention of the possible consequences, making Victor even more certain that he was the one who’d done it. Coach stared at all of them one at a time, and finally demanded, “Would someone mind telling me what this is all about?”

“You didn’t hear about Salazar’s big announcement yesterday?” Teddy muttered, not quite making eye contact with their coach as he said it. His eyes narrowed on Victor instead. “Go ahead and tell him, it’s not like it’s some big secret anymore.”

Coach Harris turned to Victor questioningly. “What announcement?”

Victor’s jaw clenched tightly, and he couldn’t make himself say it. Not like this, not when everyone was watching him and waiting for him to just confess to it like it was something he was guilty of. Like _he_ was the one that had done something wrong.

“Victor doesn’t have to tell anyone anything,” Andrew cut in, when it became clear that Victor wasn’t going to respond to Teddy’s challenge. “We’re here to _play basketball_. Victor’s private life is none of your fucking business.”

“Language, Mr. Spencer,” Coach Harris reprimanded automatically, but there wasn’t much heat in it.

“It became my business when I found out I’ve been sharing a locker room with a fag for the past year,” Teddy fired back.

The slur made Victor’s blood boil and before he knew it he was lunging forward to shove at Teddy, catching him off guard and knocking him back a step. He quickly straightened up and pushed Victor roughly in return, his arm drawing back to hit Victor, but before the blow could land Andrew and Coach Harris intervened, Harris getting in between them to block Teddy’s punch and Andrew pulling Victor swiftly away from him.

“This stops _now_ , Mr. Anderson,” Coach Harris said as he raised his arms and effectively forced Teddy to back up a few feet.

Teddy was breathing hard, gesturing wildly at Victor as he shouted, “You can’t expect us to keep playing with him after this!”

“Just take a deep breath,” Andrew advised Victor, one hand on his shoulder like he was worried Victor might try to go after Teddy again, which was probably a fair concern to have given how completely enraged Victor felt at that moment.

“You’re right, I don’t expect you to keep playing with him,” Harris snapped, “because if you keep this up you’re off the team, Anderson!”

“ _That’s fucking bullshit!_ ”

“ _My office, now!_ ” Harris bellowed. He turned to Kieran as well, yelling, “ _Both of you!_ ”

Teddy and Kieran left the room with an echoing slam of the door, and from the hallway there was another deafening bang that Victor assumed was probably Teddy hitting or kicking something. He was tempted to punch something himself, but Andrew’s hand on his shoulder held him back. Suddenly irritated by it, Victor shrugged him off and paced away a couple of steps, trying to calm himself down with a few deep breaths. Around the room, the rest of their teammates remained silent, continuing to look anywhere but at Victor.

When Coach Harris had regained control of his own temper, he announced, “This game is canceled.” He waited impatiently for the groans and whines of protest to die down before continuing. “If any of you saw something or know anything about what happened tonight, I need you to stick around and tell me about it. _I mean it_. If I find out that any of you were covering for whoever did this, I promise you’ll find your butt parked on a bench for the rest of this season. Got it?”

Matt looked up at Harris then, and for a second Victor felt himself hoping that maybe Matt would have something supportive to say, but instead he just asked, “Is that it? Can we go now?”

Victor had to suck in another deep breath to stop himself from doing something crazy, like screaming at him or throwing a punch.

“Yeah, you can go,” Harris said dismissively. He turned to Victor. “I’m going to need you to stay, Salazar.”

Victor didn’t say anything, just went to sit on a bench far away from the rest of his teammates who were gathering up their stuff and filing out of the room.

“I’ll wait here with him,” Andrew said.

“Sure, good idea,” Harris agreed. “Victor, are your parents here tonight?”

Victor nodded. “My mom’s here.”

“Okay. I want to talk with her about what happened. Let me deal with Anderson and Gallagher first, and then I’ll come find you, all right?”

Harris stomped out of the room and Andrew moved to sit next to Victor on the bench. Pretty soon everyone had left, no one speaking a word on their way out, until it was just the two of them and the heavy silence that remained.

“Why’re you still here?” Victor asked after a few long minutes had passed by. He kept waiting for his anger to die down, but it was still there, white-hot and ready to explode again at the first provocation. He kept his hands fisted into the material of his hoodie to distract himself from how much he still wanted to hit something.

“I don’t know, I guess it just didn’t seem like a good idea for you to be alone right now,” Andrew said, off-handedly, like it didn’t make much of a difference to him. “I mean, you’re not exactly my favorite person, Salazar, but that doesn’t mean you deserve this kind of crap.”

“Thanks.” Victor thought about all those guys he had thought he knew, the ones he’d been playing with and going to school with for years. He didn’t understand how they could turn their backs on him so easily. “You were the only one that stood up for me.”

Andrew nodded thoughtfully. “Those other guys… most of them are just followers. They pretty much do whatever the biggest, loudest guy in the room is doing. Once they see how things go for Teddy and Kieran, they’ll probably change their tunes.”

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“So… guess I know why Mia was so mysterious about your guys’ break up now,” Andrew commented. “And to think that all this time I was hating your guts because I figured you must’ve cheated on her. Wait – you didn’t cheat on her, did you?”

Victor sighed, wishing they could talk about anything else. Or maybe just not talk at all. “No. I didn’t.”

Andrew accepted this with another nod, but didn’t seem especially happy about the answer. “Were you ever even into Mia? At all?”

Of all the times to bring up the topic of Mia this was one of the worst, when all Victor really wanted was to be left alone, but Andrew’s question cut through his irritation. That old, familiar feeling of guilt crept in, reminding him of the hurt he’d caused and the potential friendship he’d lost.

“I love Mia,” Victor admitted sadly, “just… not like that.”

They both looked up at the sound of the door opening, and Victor was surprised to find Benji standing there, his eyes traveling from Victor over to the spray-painted locker and then widening in shock. His expression morphed quickly into one of concern and anger, every line of Benji’s body going tense as he turned deliberately away from it to face Victor.

“I have a feeling he’s here for you,” Andrew said, getting up from the bench. He patted Victor’s shoulder and nodded in the direction of the coach’s office. “Good luck, Salazar.”

“Are you okay?” Benji asked, walking over quickly to take Andrew’s place once he’d left. “They just announced that the game is canceled, and then one of your teammates told me and Felix what happened. Victor, I’m so sorry.” His mouth tightened. He didn’t look back at the locker as he said, “That is really fucking disgusting.”

“Guess you were right, coming out at this school was a pretty stupid thing to do,” Victor said bitterly.

“It wasn’t stupid. It was a _brave_ thing to do, Victor, it’s just these jerks that are making it so hard for you.”

Benji seemed hesitant to touch Victor, his hand repeatedly moving toward Victor’s leg and away again without making contact. He was still so incredibly angry that he was glad Benji was keeping his distance. Victor didn’t want to be comforted just then; he didn’t want gentle touches and kind words. He wanted to put his fist through something, wanted to break something in order to release some of this awful pressure inside him.

“What exactly happened here?” Benji asked tentatively.

“Pretty much what it looks like,” Victor said, his eyes cutting over to the graffiti quickly. The sight of it made him want to throw up. “Teddy Anderson and Kieran Gallagher did it, and then they tried to pressure me into leaving the team. Just so they won’t have to a share a locker room with a-”

He stopped himself, unable to say the word that Teddy had thrown at him earlier with so much disgust.

“ _Fuck!_ ” he swore loudly, slamming one fist down hard on the bench, leaving his knuckles throbbing with the force of the impact. He slumped forward and covered his face with his hands. “Maybe they’re right, maybe there _is_ something wrong with me… why else would they look at me like that? I never should’ve said anything, I never should’ve told anyone-”

“Victor, no, don’t-” Benji tried to interject, but Victor said sharply into the dark hollow space within his hands, “Maybe all of this was a mistake.”

Benji flinched, his hand freezing just a hair’s breadth away from Victor’s leg. He pulled it back to himself as quickly as if Victor had slapped it away.

“If I’d kept it a secret,” Victor ground out, his voice catching roughly on the words like they were made of jagged shards of glass, “they never would’ve done this to me, they never would’ve looked at me like that, with so much hate… If I’d just kept my mouth shut, _he never would have left us_ …”

All of the rage and hurt escaped at once in a sob that made his whole chest ache, burning his throat as it tore free. Benji finally stopped holding himself back and wrapped his arms around Victor, holding him so tightly it felt almost like he was pinning him there against his chest, anchoring Victor in place more than simply hugging him. The strength of the embrace was exactly what he needed, filling him with the sense that Benji was strong enough to hold him together even in that moment when Victor could no longer manage to do it himself.

“It isn’t your fault that some of your teammates are pricks, and it isn’t your fault that he left,” Benji said, “it’s _his fault_. He was the one that did something wrong. He was the one that hurt you. It’s okay to feel angry and upset and betrayed by that, but it’s not okay to blame yourself for it.”

Victor cried into Benji’s shoulder, eyes hot with stinging tears. Against the fabric of Benji’s shirt he whispered the words that had been plaguing him all week, trapped like incessant, buzzing insects in the back of his mind. “I just don’t – I don’t understand why he doesn’t love me anymore.”

“I’m fairly certain love doesn’t work like that, Victor,” Benji said, speaking softly but with conviction. “Look… I don’t really know your dad very well. The most time I spent around him was at your birthday party, but that whole day it couldn’t have been more obvious that he loves you. I talked to him, actually, just for a few minutes. He asked me about how you were doing at the cafe and when I told him you were a fast learner he just said, ‘Of course he is.’ He looked so proud of you. Honestly, for a second I was even kind of jealous, because I couldn’t remember the last time my dad talked about me like that… But the point is, I don’t think your dad could just turn all of that off the second he found out that you’re gay. He’s struggling, and he’s being a pretty shitty parent right now, but there’s no way he would stop loving you that easily.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“I guess I can’t know for certain, but I feel extremely confident about this,” Benji said, beginning to loosen his grip a little. He leaned back a bit in order to look down at Victor. “I don’t think love is just something you can turn on and off depending on the circumstances. I mean, I’m pretty sure it would take a hell of a lot to get _me_ to stop loving you.”

Victor shook his head at the cheesiness of the line, but the warmth that it brought him was so incredibly welcome then. It spread through him, soothing some of the places where he hurt so much, and made it just that little bit easier to breathe again.

There was a knock on the door, and Victor quickly straightened up, rubbing his hand over his face to wipe away the evidence of his break down. Benji released him, scooting back so they were close but not quite touching anymore. Coach Harris entered a moment later, gruffly overlooking the signs of Victor’s tears.

“I’d like to speak with you now, Victor,” Coach Harris said, voice gentler than was typical for him. “You’re welcome to bring Mr. Campbell with you if you want.”

Benji looked at him questioningly and Victor nodded, so Benji followed him out into the hallway. Isabel was already there waiting for him, her face the picture of worry, and standing next to her was Mike.

“Hi Victor,” Mike greeted him. “It’s good to see you again, although I wish the circumstances were better.”

“Thanks,” Victor said quietly. His throat still felt raw and sore from crying so hard just a short while ago, and he knew everyone could probably see what a mess he was. He wished he could just go home. All he wanted was to curl up in his bed and forget the entire day had ever happened.

“Victor, Mrs. Salazar, would you please join me in my office?” Coach Harris said, leading them to a nearby door.

Isabel paused before entering, glancing back at Mike. She turned to the coach and asked, “Is it all right if Mr. Campbell joins us? We’ve been talking and it sounds like he’s been through something similar recently with his own son, so his input might be helpful.”

“Whatever you’d like to do is fine with me,” Harris said, and so they all followed him into the small room. There weren’t quite enough chairs for everyone, so Coach sent Benji down the hall to grab an extra one out of a classroom, and once they were all seated he began. “First, I’d like to apologize on behalf of the school for the incident that happened this afternoon. The actions of the two boys who were responsible for it go against our anti-bullying policies and I am working together with the principal to decide on an appropriate punishment for them. At the very least, they will no longer be part of the basketball team, and they will be fined for the damage done to the school property.”

“And? This is about more than just damaging school property,” Isabel said impatiently. “It sounds like this isn’t just some isolated incident. Mike told me that back in October, Benji was attacked at the Homecoming dance just because he showed up with another boy as his date. Anti-bullying policies don’t amount to much if they’re aren’t strictly enforced.”

Coach Harris looked a little taken aback by Isabel’s tone. “Absolutely, I am completely on your side here. I promise you I will make sure that the two boys who did this are punished appropriately.”

“I think maybe the problem is that not enough is being done to discourage this kind of behavior in the first place,” Mike said, speaking in that slow, careful way of his. “Benji’s previous high school in Atlanta invested a lot into its anti-bullying campaign a few years ago. The teachers received special training in how to deal with it, including how to prevent it, and students also got lessons in cultural awareness and sensitivity. Has Brandon High School done anything like that?”

“Well, uh, we do celebrate other cultures here,” Coach Harris said awkwardly. To be fair, the man was out of his depth with pretty much anything that wasn’t immediately related to sports in Victor’s experience. “There’s a culture fair every spring, and uh…”

“That’s great, but it doesn’t really seem like enough,” Isabel cut in. “A culture fair isn’t going to stop bullies from doing something like this again. When I heard about what happened to Benji-” Isabel had to pause in order to take a steadying breath, and underneath her outrage was a fear that took Victor by surprise. “I shouldn’t have to be afraid for my son’s safety when he’s at school.”

“I hear what you’re saying, and again, I’m all for doing as much as possible to crack down on bullying. I want to help, but there’s a limit to what I can do as just the basketball coach and P. E. teacher. If you really want to make some changes, I’d recommend bringing this up at the next P. T. A. meeting.”

Mike shook his head at that. “My wife already _did_ bring this up at the meeting in November. So far it doesn’t seem like it’s really gone anywhere.”

“Well, I’ll definitely mention your concerns to the principal, and in the meantime, I’d suggest talking with other parents. The more of them you can get on your side with this thing, the more likely you are to get something done. I think there’s going to be another P. T. A. meeting in February, so you might consider revisiting it then.”

Throughout this, Victor and Benji sat quietly and listened to the adults talk, and it seemed like Benji felt just as uncomfortable with the discussion as Victor was. At the mention of the Homecoming dance, Benji had crossed his arms tightly over his chest and stared off into a corner of the room. Victor couldn’t help wondering if Mike even knew about any of the other stuff that had happened to Benji at school. Given the way that Benji had kept it even from him, Victor doubted it.

Now that the anger and adrenaline were wearing off Victor felt so tired, and he wasn’t sure he liked the idea of his mom going on some kind of big anti-bullying crusade in his defense even if he recognized that it was an important cause. It just sounded like the kind of thing that would attract a lot of attention to him and might actually make things worse instead of better.

“Victor, how are you holding up?” Harris asked him, snapping Victor out of his thoughts.

“Fine,” Victor said shortly, so ready to be done with this discussion. All he wanted now was to go home.

Harris nodded. “Okay. Well, I want to apologize again, to you Victor. I want you to know that I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that something like that doesn’t happen again, and that everyone on the team gets a thorough reminder of what good sportsmanship means.”

As exhausted and sick of all of it as he was, Victor still appreciated the fact that Coach Harris was being so supportive. He nodded and said, “Thank you. That means a lot.”

“If any of the guys on the team give you any trouble, I want you to talk to me. Okay, Salazar? I can’t make this a safe space for you if I don’t know what’s going on, so please keep me in the loop.” He waited until Victor nodded again before continuing. “Good. Then unless there’s anything else you’d like to discuss, I think we’re all done here.”

Victor followed his mom and Mike out to the parking lot where they all paused to say goodbye. A little ways away he could see Pilar, Felix, and Adrian waiting in the car for them.

“Thanks for taking the time to talk with me,” Isabel told Mike. “It was lovely meeting you this evening, and I really appreciated your support with Coach Harris.”

“It was no trouble,” Mike said politely. “Great meeting you as well.” He turned to Victor with a small smile. “Next time I hope I’ll actually get to see you play. Have a good night, Victor.”

“Thanks, you too.”

Mike seemed to realize that Benji was waiting awkwardly for him to go away so that he could say goodbye to Victor, and wandered off to his car by himself.

“I’m sorry we didn’t get to have dinner tonight. I was looking forward to getting to know you better,” Isabel told Benji. She sounded a little stiff to Victor’s ears, a little formal, like she was trying too hard. It was nice that she was trying though, all the same. “Maybe you and your parents could come over some evening instead.”

The thought of Benji and his parents in the Salazar house sounded unbelievably weird to Victor, but he didn’t say anything, just watched as Benji and Isabel wished each other a good night and his mom finally left the two of them alone.

“You gonna be ok?” Benji asked, inching a little closer to Victor. The back of his hand brushed against Victor’s knuckles lightly in invitation, so Victor threaded their fingers together and told himself not to worry about who might see them. The parking lot was basically empty anyway, now that everyone who’d come for the game had left a long time ago.

“Yeah. Thanks, for earlier.” He felt a sudden, strong surge of guilt as he remembered what he’d told Benji in the locker room. “I’m sorry. For saying that all of this was a mistake. I didn’t really mean that.”

“I know,” Benji said, but Victor could tell that the words had stung.

He took a step forward, swallowing hard and willing himself not to be afraid. Before he could talk himself out of it, he leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to Benji’s lips. When he pulled back a fraction of a second later, Benji was staring at him in surprise, and Victor’s heart was racing a mile a minute. He couldn’t believe that he’d just done that – that he’d kissed a boy right there where his family could see them. It felt terrifying and incredible all at once.

“I mean it,” he said, squeezing Benji’s hand in his. “It was a really stupid thing to say. All of this – coming out to myself and everyone else, being with you – it’s all worth whatever stupid crap I have to deal with as a result. It sucks, and days like this really hurt, but I know that it’s worth it because being myself makes me happy. And being with _you_ makes me happy.” Victor couldn’t look away from the smile that spread across Benji’s face, and then he had to kiss him again, and despite the pounding of his heart it was getting a little easier not to be so scared. “I’m sorry that I ever doubted that.”

“You make me happy, too,” Benji told him, and Victor felt like he could stand there in the cool twilight air holding Benji’s hand and staring at him forever, but a second later they were interrupted by a high pitched voice shouting at them.

“ _Victor! I’m hungry!_ ” Adrian yelled out the car window, making them both jump. Victor let out a startled laugh. “Stop doing gross stuff and get in the car!”

“Yeah, Victor!” Pilar joined in, pretending to be angry even though they could all hear the laughter in her voice. “Enough with the smooch fest! Some of us want dinner!”

“Geez, would you guys cut him a break already? He’s had a rough day!” Felix could be heard saying in Victor’s defense.

Victor looked over at his family, and back at Benji who was grinning at him, and said, “You know what? Who says we can’t go out for dinner tonight?”

Benji blinked at him. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah. Why should we let those bigots ruin our weekend?” Benji was still staring at him skeptically so he sighed and admitted, “Okay, up until like a minute ago, all I wanted was to just go home and lie around in bed feeling depressed. But now it kind of seems like if I do that, I’ll be letting them win. That’s what Teddy said to me earlier – that he wanted to make my life miserable. So what better way can I get him back for what he did than by just, like, _not_ being miserable?”

“ _Victor!_ _Apúrate!_ ” Adrian shouted again, followed by Isabel telling him off for being so impatient in rapid-fire Spanish.

“ _Oye, Mami_!” Victor called over to the car, and his mom rolled down her window to hear him better. “Can we still go out to Olivia’s even though technically there was no game tonight?”

She looked too surprised to answer for a second, but then a broad smile spread over her lips. “ _Por supuesto!_ Hurry up and get over here though before your brother chews a hole in the seat.”

So that was how, about twenty minutes later, Victor ended up seated at a table at Olivia’s, one of those semi-casual Italian restaurants with red and white checked tablecloths, surrounded by his mom, siblings, Felix, Benji, and Mike. Mike gave Amelia a call and she joined them soon after, and as surreal as it was to be sharing a meal with his boyfriend and both of their families, it also felt like exactly what was needed to heal some of the wounds inflicted by Armando and Victor’s teammates. There were some moments when the conversation felt stilted, or when his mother’s laughter was a little forced, or when Mike’s mouth tightened at some direct mention of Victor and Benji’s relationship being more than friendly. And there were also a few times when Victor’s mind wandered back to what had just happened that afternoon, and he felt angry and hurt all over again. But whenever something threatened to spoil the evening, Adrian would do something cute, or Felix would say something funny, and they’d all laugh and soon the moment would pass.

At some point during the meal the topic shifted to embarrassing childhood stories, which Victor was okay with at first because it was mostly Amelia sharing hilarious stuff about Benji.

“Did he tell you about that time with the raccoons? And the picket line?” she asked, while Benji tried to hide behind his hands.

“He did,” Victor confirmed, grinning.

“Bless him. He really tried to save that field for them. What about the thing with the hedgehog?”

“Mum, I swear to god, I will never forgive you,” Benji threatened her melodramatically, but it only seemed to egg Amelia on even further.

“His name was Mr. Tibbles-”

“Mum, no.”

“-and he lived secretly in a cardboard house that Benji had constructed in his closet-”

“Shh, let her tell it,” Victor said, shushing Benji when he groaned loudly.

“-for _nearly a month_ before we found out about him.” Amelia finished, looking pleased with herself and extremely fond of Benji despite the way he was glaring darkly at her. “I guess some school friend of his decided she didn’t want him anymore and just passed him off to Benji one day at recess.”

“What happened to him?” Adrian asked, already highly invested in the fate of Mr. Tibbles.

“Well, we didn’t have the heart to take him away from Benji, he’d already grown so attached, so we let him keep him. Had to get him a proper enclosure, though. The cardboard house was darling, Benji even made tiny furniture to go inside it, and cut out curtains and things from magazines, but-”

“I hate you so much,” Benji muttered, as Victor bit back a laugh and Pilar giggled. Victor’s laughter died away pretty quickly though when Isabel said, “You know, that reminds me of when Victor was seven and-”

Isabel told her story despite all of Victor’s protests (it was about the time that he held an elaborate funeral for a hamster in first grade just to cheer Feña up after her pet died unexpectedly), with additional humiliating details thrown in just for fun by his sister because she was a sadist (like the fact that he’d dressed up as a priest by wrapping a lacy tablecloth around his shoulders as a pretend cassock).

“Okay, enough already. No more stories about anything I did when I was seven,” Victor told his mother, shifting in his seat uncomfortably under the weight of everyone’s amused stares. “Literally everything I did back then was embarrassing.”

“Hey,” Adrian protested, offended on behalf of seven year olds everywhere.

“Aww, but you were so sweet at that age,” Isabel cooed obnoxiously, just to make Victor blush and roll his eyes at her.

The topic moved on, fortunately, to other things, and as Victor sat there surrounded by all of these people that he loved, he couldn’t help feeling simultaneously so grateful for all of them and so heartbroken by the fact that Armando wasn’t there sitting next to Isabel like he should have been. Benji had been so certain earlier when he’d told Victor that he believed Armando still loved him, and Victor desperately wanted to believe it, too, but it was difficult when his father’s absence felt like a ghost that followed their family wherever they went.

He tried to stay focused instead on what he did have, which was this group of people that were here, that cared for him and supported him. Victor was learning that there was a lot of ugliness in the world – a lot of people who had been hurt and wanted to hurt others in return, and people who had been taught to hate anyone different from them and never bothered to question it. People who believed so strongly that life should fit into neat, tidy boxes, to the extent that any deviation from that norm became a problem to be fixed rather than an individual difference to be celebrated. But he was also learning that those people were not the majority, and that it was doing a disservice to the people who did accept him to elevate the voices of those who wanted to hurt him above those who loved him.

He was dreading going back to school on Monday because he knew it wouldn’t be easy. What had happened that day with Teddy and Kieran might turn out to only be the beginning of the difficulties he would face. Even so, Victor was beginning to understand that the secret to getting through the hard times was by holding on as tight as you could to the memories of the good ones, and taking the opportunity to make new ones whenever you could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, I had no idea where my brain got the name Mr. Tibbles. I googled it just to check if I subconsciously remembered it from something, and it turns out it's the name of the cat that belongs to Harry Potter's neighbor. So I guess reading those books a million times (plus WAY too much HP fanfic) has filled my brain with some really obscure Potter trivia lol


	35. Tú Sí Sabes Quererme

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: homophobia, mention of infidelity
> 
> The title for this chapter comes from the song of the same name by Natalia Lafourcade. At the end of this chapter there are some longer passages than usual in Spanish, so check the end notes for the translation.

On Monday morning Victor sat in his truck in the school parking lot trying to summon up the courage to go inside. Pilar had already gone in without him after he told her he wanted some time to himself first. After about five minutes of just sitting there sweating and contemplating everything that could go wrong that day, he pulled out his phone and began writing a message to Simon in the hopes that it would help to settle his nerves.

_Hey Simon, did you guys have a good weekend? The pics of your guys’ trip upstate looked really cool, I was super jealous when I saw the cabin and all the snow and everything. Can you believe I’ve only ever seen snow once? We don’t exactly get a lot of it down here._

_So, I know the amount of drama in my life is probably beginning to seem unrealistic, but somehow_ _the universe keeps_ _defying all the odds and sending even more of it my way. Although I guess this time I_ _basically_ _brought it on myself when I accidentally came out to a couple of my friends during class on Friday_ _(by accidentally I mean I just sort of blurted it out to them like an idiot_ _with zero thought for the consequences_ _.) Anyway, some people overheard me and now the entire school knows._

_There was supposed to be a basketball game on Saturday, but two guys on my team thought it would be funny to write something homophobic on my locker with spray paint, which led to them getting kicked off the team and our coach canceling the game._ _I_ _still_ _feel_ _super pissed off every time I think about what they did, but I’m also pretty nervous that there’s going to be even more shit like that now that everyone knows about me. Especially since Benji finally admitted to me that he’s been getting_ _harassed by people_ _ever since he_ _came out on his first day_ _here._

_Did you ever get bullied like this when you were in high school? I know that your school was better about teaching tolerance and stuff, but if it did happen to you, what did you do about it?_

_Love Victor_

Despite a lot of people staring and whispering and occasionally someone doing something stupid like muttering an insult as he passed by them in the hall, Victor managed to survive the first few periods of the day without anything too horrible happening. But then it was time for the class he was most worried about – Chemistry.

Benji was already there when he arrived, seated at their usual table, and Victor froze for a moment near the door as he panicked over what to do. On the one hand, he’d been sitting with Benji ever since November, so everyone would notice if he sat somewhere else, and it would probably hurt Benji’s feelings if he did that anyway. But on the other hand, if he did go and sit next to him, everyone would probably stare at them the whole time and gossip about it, the way they’d been doing any time Victor went anywhere near him since coming out on Friday. Apparently two gay kids in the same place at the same time was just too much for the students of Brandon High School to deal with.

In the end, Victor forced himself to stop being such a coward and went to take his usual seat. Predictably a bunch of heads turned to look at them, but he did his best to ignore it by slouching down low in the chair and staring determinedly forward.

Benji sighed in irritation at the looks they were receiving and said quietly, “Morning. Everything go okay so far today?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Victor said.

Just then the person sitting in front of them, a popular red-headed girl named Madison, turned around to face them. She leaned in close to their table, her friend Natalie looking over as well, and smiled brightly. “Hey, can I ask you guys a question?”

“Uh, okay,” Victor agreed a little awkwardly. He couldn’t remember ever having said more than a few words to either of them before.

“So, we were just wondering if y’all are a couple or not,” Madison said. Natalie’s eyes lit up with amusement, like she couldn’t believe Madison’s audacity at just coming right out and asking them.

“Uh…” Victor trailed off stupidly, completely unprepared for this sudden interest in his personal life from a girl who barely even knew him. Benji was quietly watching Victor, and seemed to be waiting to follow Victor’s lead, so he said, “Um. Yeah, we are.”

“Oh my god, I _knew_ it,” Madison squealed, loud enough to draw the attention of everyone sitting nearby. She put a hand on her friend’s arm and giggled. “I told you so, Natalie. Y’all are just so freaking cute together, I can’t stand it.”

Benji looked like it was taking a real effort not to roll his eyes. “Thanks,” he said dryly.

This whole exchange was so uncomfortable, not only because Madison’s excitement about the two them being a couple was weirdly over the top, but also because of how much more openly everyone was looking at them now, like Madison breaking the ice by talking to them had somehow given everyone else permission to just stare and gossip as freely as they wanted. Not to mention the fact that just a couple of tables away were the only two people in the room not currently gawking at them – Mia and Lake.

“Could I, like, take a picture of you guys?” Madison asked, dragging Victor’s attention away from the back of Mia’s head and over to the girls sitting in front of him.

“What?” Victor asked, too surprised to know how to respond to that. “Why?”

“For my Insta,” Madison said, like that should have been obvious. She got her phone out and stared at them expectantly. “Just, scoot a little closer together. And maybe you could do something cute, like, kiss or something?”

“Mads, are you for real right now?” Natalie asked in disbelief.

“We are _not_ doing that,” Benji told her flatly.

“Oh, come on, it’s just a photo,” Madison pouted. “I just wanna show my friends how adorable y’all are.”

“No means no, Madison. It’s this little thing people call consent.”

A ripple of gasps went through the room, and everyone, including Victor, stared over in shock at Mia, who was glaring stonily in the redhead’s direction.

Madison’s expression immediately soured. “I don’t see how this is any of your business. He’s not exactly your territory anymore, is he?”

“He’s not _anyone’s_ territory, he’s a _person_. So maybe you should treat him like one instead of acting like he’s some exhibit at the zoo.”

The look on Madison’s face had Victor worried that she might be about ready to rip off her earrings and leap at Mia, but before she could react Ms. Thomas returning to the classroom effectively put an end to the argument. The rest of the class seemed disappointed that their entertainment had dried up so abruptly, which made Victor even more irritated by all of them than he already was.

He could see Benji discreetly texting under the table as Ms. Thomas began the lesson, and a second later Victor’s phone lit up. Benji stared forward with a perfectly neutral expression as Victor read the message.

_I can see why you made the attempt at dating Mia, that girl is a total badass_

Victor snorted, which earned him a couple of curious looks as well as a suspicious one from Ms. Thomas, and he quickly tried to get his smile under control and look attentive.

The rest of the lesson passed by pretty uneventfully to Victor’s relief. As soon as the bell rang, Madison stormed away with a dirty look at Mia, who waited until the other girl had left before coming over to Benji and Victor’s table, Lake following along behind her.

“Hey,” she said, quiet and a little awkward, probably well aware of the fact that they still had an audience. She cracked a small, exasperated smile and said, “How much you wanna bet it’ll only take fifteen minutes for news of my little argument with Madison to spread through the entire school?”

“I don’t know, that might be kinda conservative,” Benji said wryly.

Lake nodded in agreement and predicted, “Ten minutes, and they’ll be saying it was a full on cat fight.”

“Just as long as everyone knows how thoroughly you schooled her,” Benji said, and Mia’s smile turned sheepish.

“Sorry to just jump in there like that. I’m sure y’all could’ve handled it yourselves, but I really can’t stand that girl. She had no business treating you like that.”

Victor said, a little cautious about speaking directly to Mia, but growing more hopeful, “You were seriously amazing earlier. Thanks for supporting us.”

Mia looked back at him steadily, her voice casual but the meaning in the words clear as she told him, “Sure. What are friends for?”

It was impossible to quantify just how grateful and happy that made him. He’d been dreading coming back to school all weekend, constantly imagining how he’d be humiliated or harassed next, so to suddenly find that he was not only getting through the day but actually finding things to be joyful about was kind of mind blowing.

“Do you guys, uh – do you wanna eat lunch with us?” Victor blurted out, and immediately felt embarrassed by the possibility that he might be getting too carried away.

But Mia just nodded and said, “Sure, that’d be really nice.”

“Ugh, _finally_!” Lake burst out, and then surprised all of them by pulling Benji into a hug. “I have totally missed hanging out with you.” She pulled back a bit, but kept her arm looped through one of Benji’s. “These last couple of months of avoiding each other have been _crazy awkward_. Can we all just agree to be done with it now?”

Benji and Victor both looked uncertainly toward Mia.

“Yeah,” Mia said, slow but sure. “Yeah, I think we can.”

Victor grinned at her, unable to help himself, and Mia caught his gaze and began to smile back. He was tempted for a second to go in for a hug, too, but he didn’t think that he and Mia were quite there yet.

“Okay, I hope you don’t have a problem with me stealing your man, Victor, ‘cause me and Benji have some catching up to do,” Lake said, and promptly began dragging him with her toward the exit. Benji just laughed and let himself be pulled along.

“I think maybe we do, too,” Mia said, and so Victor grabbed his backpack and began walking with her to the cafeteria.

“So, uh, how have you been?” Victor asked.

“I’ve been… all right, I guess. Well, no, actually, my life has been pretty crazy lately, but it is starting to get better now.” She looked over at him with a hint of sadness in her eyes as she said, “I’m guessing things have been crazy for you, too.”

“That’s… kind of an understatement.”

As they passed through the crowded hallway, they were still getting more attention than Victor was comfortable with, but at the moment being with Mia was a little easier than walking by all those people with Benji would have been. It was completely messed up that he couldn’t feel just as safe with Benji as he did with Mia. He could only hope that as time went on people would get used to having another out gay kid at school and stop obsessing over him so much.

Mia looked at him curiously, probably wondering what he was thinking since he’d gotten lost in his thoughts for a moment there. “Maybe – uh, maybe we could get a coffee some time.” She smiled ruefully. “As _friends_. It’d be nice to hear what’s been going on with you.”

“Yeah,” Victor was quick to agree, his heart full to bursting with hope. “Definitely. I’m up for that anytime.”

They had just reached the entrance to the cafeteria when Victor paused suddenly, taking in the noisy, crowded room before them and panicking. There were close to a thousand people in there and all of them knew about him now. He couldn’t avoid them forever, but was he really ready for this?

“Victor?” Mia looked back at him in surprise. “Are you okay?”

He swallowed hard, trying to get a handle on his anxiety. Mia glanced ahead of them and seemed to realize what was freaking him out.

“Hey, you can do this. It’s just lunch. And anyway, no one’s going to mess with you now that they’ve all heard about how comprehensively I put Madison in her place earlier.”

The joke startled a laugh out of him, and it gave him the momentum he needed to somehow put one foot in front of the other and begin to follow her inside. A lot of heads turned, and some guy shouted something rude, but Victor ignored it. He kept himself focused on the table ahead of him where his friends and Benji were waiting, and on Mia’s quiet, supportive presence at his side.

The first thing Victor noticed when they reached the others was that Matt wasn’t there. A quick scan of the room revealed him over on the far side, sitting with some of the other guys from the basketball team. Although Matt turning his back on Victor still stung, Victor found that he didn’t really care that Matt wasn’t eating with them that day. If anything, he was glad not to have to share the table with him.

Turning back to his own group, the second thing he became aware of was the extremely put out expression on Felix’s face. The reason for it became obvious when Victor and Mia sat down and Victor noticed the way that Lake was sitting in between Benji and Felix, with her attention solely on Victor’s boyfriend and her back turned to her own, caught up in a conversation about Benji’s new band.

“Victor,” Felix said, “don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled you and Mia have made up, but when I was imagining this day finally happening I thought it would mean getting to spend more quality time with Lake at school. Except now it seems like the only one enjoying quality time with Lake is _your boyfriend._ ”

“Honey, we already had some quality time after second period, remember? In that utility closet?” Lake said, not even bothering to turn around and face Felix as she spoke to him. She then carried on talking to Benji while Felix’s face slowly turned as red as the shirt he was wearing.

Victor looked nervously toward Feña, who he hadn’t seen since he’d come out, to gauge her reaction to what Felix had just said about him having a boyfriend. Feña stared back at him pointedly.

“What?” she asked. “Listen, if you’re waiting for me to faint away with shock, you’re going to be sitting there for a long time.”

“Oh.” Victor didn’t really know what to make of that. So far most of his experiences with coming out had resulted in tears or emotionally charged moments or hugs (sometimes all three), which meant that he had no idea what to do with someone who just didn’t seem to think it was a big deal.

She took a sip of her soda and then said, “Anyway, I’ve known that you were gay since, like, eighth grade.”

This statement was met by a long period of silence from everyone. Even Benji and Lake paused in their discussion of potential band names to look over at Feña in surprise.

“What – how-” Victor sputtered.

“No way,” Felix protested. “No one knows Victor better than _I_ do, and _I_ didn’t know-”

Feña shrugged. “I just have really excellent gaydar. It’s a gift.”

“Huh.” Mia shot Victor a quick, meaningful glance. “That sounds… very handy.”

“But how could you possibly know that?” Victor demanded. “ _I_ didn’t even know back then.”

“Gaydar works in mysterious ways,” Feña answered noncommittally, and when Victor continued to stare at her she rolled her eyes and said, “Fine, geez. If you must know, I figured it out because I might have had a teeny tiny little crush on you that year, but every time I tried to show you I was interested, you didn’t notice. Which is probably because you seemed to be too busy noticing Eric Becker instead.”

“Ohhh,” Felix said, eyes going wide with comprehension. “So _that’s_ what was going on there.”

“I have no idea what you guys are talking about,” Victor muttered, too embarrassed to admit that he was also only just then realizing that he’d probably had a crush on Eric in middle school.

Lake turned back to face the rest of them, saying, “Wait a minute, Eric Becker, the one on the swim team?” She seemed to be struggling to hold back a huge grin as she turned to Mia. “Um, I’m sorry, but didn’t you _also_ like-”

“Nope,” Mia cut her off immediately. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence.”

“Who’s this Eric guy?” Benji asked, clearly intrigued. Lake pointed him out at a table nearby, and Benji nodded appreciatively. “Nice.”

His eyes met Victor’s, warm with amusement, and Victor felt his whole face go hot.

He could not believe that this was his life now. Everything about the conversation they’d just had was surreal, especially considering they’d all just discussed Victor’s sexuality right there in front of his ex-girlfriend who seemed to have moved on enough to actually be okay with it. They all knew now that he was gay and that Benji was his boyfriend, and aside from Matt everyone in his little group of friends had accepted those facts.

The one person who seemed to be quiet and uncomfortable at lunch that day, surprisingly, was Alicia. She hadn’t said a word since Victor had sat down, and seemed to be more interested in staring down at her food than interacting with anyone, which was completely unlike her. He didn’t really know what to make of it, since he was fairly certain that she didn’t have a problem with him being gay. There was probably some other thing bothering her that he wasn’t aware of.

A quick look around the room revealed a number of people staring over at their table, but by this point in the day Victor was almost starting to get used to the feeling of being constantly watched. He could see Teddy and Kieran on the opposite side of the room, sitting with a group that included a lot of other jocks, all of them laughing noisily at something. They weren’t paying any attention to Victor, fortunately, so he quickly looked away from them before they noticed him. He didn’t want to waste any more time dwelling on what had happened on Saturday anyway.

At another table a good distance away from that one Victor spotted Jeremy. He seemed to be hanging out with the stoner kids now, his usual all black and gray attire blending in well with the grunge look that group had going on. Judging by the gloomy expression on his face he wasn’t any happier with his new friends than he had been with Victor’s. He wondered if Jeremy had kept the papers Victor had slipped into his locker or if they’d all ended up in the trash.

Just then Jeremy looked up and caught Victor’s gaze, so Victor nodded slightly at him. Even from a few tables away, he could see Jeremy’s eyes roaming over the people gathered around Victor, taking in Mia there next to him, the way she and Lake were giggling at something Felix had just said, the friendly conversation going on between Benji and Feña. Jeremy’s eyes narrowed, his frown deepening into a bitter scowl, and he looked away from Victor quickly without acknowledging him.

Victor wanted to feel bad for him, but it was hard to when he knew that Jeremy’s isolation was of his own making. So Victor put him out of his mind and turned back to the people he was with, realizing only then that Benji had been watching him as he’d been looking around the room. There was worry in Benji’s gaze, but he didn’t say anything, just offered Victor a small smile which Victor returned, to show him that everything was fine. Because the truth was, everything actually _was_ fine, as unbelievable as that was. He’d expected this day to be awful and yet, thanks to the awesome friends in his life, it was turning out to be better than he could have ever predicted.

When the bell rang to announce the end of the last period, he was feeling pretty good about having gotten through the day without any major incidents. There’d been some stupid minor things (in addition to the endless staring and gossiping) which had been annoying, but nothing big and awful like what Teddy and Kieran had done. It was with a feeling of relief that Victor headed over to his locker before he left for the day, and was surprised to find Alicia there waiting for him. She looked nothing like her usual cheery self, hovering there awkwardly with her arms crossed over a textbook that she was hugging to her chest.

“Hey, um. Are you free now? I just wanted to ask you about something.”

Victor nodded. “I don’t have a ton of time before I need to go to work, but I can talk for a bit. What’s up?”

Alicia glanced around the busy hallway. “Uh, maybe we could go somewhere a little quieter?”

“Sure, just gimme a sec,” he said, setting his backpack down on the floor and opening the door of his locker. The second it swung open Victor jumped back in shock as a cascade of brightly colored stuff came pouring out of it. Victor, Alicia, and everyone else around them stopped to stare at the pile of rainbow colored confetti and condom packets that now covered Victor’s feet and the linoleum around him. Most humiliating of all was the piece of paper that floated down a second after the rest of it, which seemed to be a page ripped out of a dirty magazine featuring a fully naked guy spread out on a couch. The moment of surprised silence barely lasted long enough for his brain to process what he was even looking at before the hallway erupted in laughter and murmuring voices and catcalls.

Joe Davis sneered from a few feet away, “Jesus, Salazar, save all that gay shit for the pride parade.”

“That is so disgusting,” some girl muttered on her way past, and Victor didn’t know if she meant the prank or if she was just referring to _him_. Someone else shouted a nasty joke as Victor scrambled to grab as much of the stuff as he could, especially the photo, and he smashed it all into one thick handful of crap that he could carry to the nearest trash can. Alicia was right behind him with more of it, dumping it in after him, and to Victor’s surprise several other students helped out as well. By the time he turned around to go back for more, it was pretty much all gone, aside from a few bits of colorful paper scattered here and there across the floor.

“Thanks,” he mumbled quietly, unable to make eye contact with anyone right at that moment. He picked up the stuff he’d needed from his locker and slammed the door shut roughly. He didn’t bother to look at Alicia, just bit out, “Let’s go,” before grabbing his backpack and rushing toward the exit.

A few minutes later they were sitting in Victor’s truck in an awkward silence. Alicia was the first to speak, tentatively reaching out to touch his arm as she asked, “Are you okay?”

Victor forced himself not to pull away from her, even though he really didn’t want to be touched just then. He was nearly as angry as he had been on Saturday but this time there was no obvious culprit to go after, which left him full of a furious energy that he had no way of releasing.

“I’m fine,” he said shortly, and breathed a little easier when she finally took her hand away.

“That was so gross and stupid,” she said, looking over at him sympathetically. “I can’t believe how awful some people can be. Has this stuff been happening to you a lot since Friday?”

“Well, considering it’s only Monday and this is already the second shitty homophobic prank someone left for me at my locker, I’d say, yeah, it’s been happening a lot,” Victor snapped, with more irritation than Alicia deserved. He sighed when he saw her wince, and said, “Sorry. I’m not mad at you, I’m just pissed off about what happened.”

“It’s okay. I don’t blame you, I’d be pretty freaked out, too, if it was me.”

Victor drummed his fingers against the steering wheel a little impatiently. All he wanted to do now was get as far away from school as possible. So much for the day going better than he’d hoped. “What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” he asked, hoping to just get the conversation over with quickly.

“I need to ask you about something,” Alicia said, and there was a strange steely note to the words that had Victor looking over at her in surprise. He’d never heard her talk like that before, or look as serious as she did just then. “But you have to promise me that you won’t tell anyone what I said.” She stared over at him expectantly until he agreed, and then asked, “Did anything ever happen between you and Jeremy?”

Victor’s mouth fell open for a second. “Me and Jeremy?” he repeated dumbly.

Alicia just nodded.

“No, of course not,” Victor said immediately. “But – Alicia, do you know about him?”

“That he’s into guys?” she confirmed. “Yeah. I figured it out right before we broke up. I suspected for a long time that he was cheating on me, especially when I got some weird texts from him that were clearly meant for someone else. I thought it must be some other girl, but then, uh, something happened and when I confronted him about it – well, anyway, I figured it out.”

She searched his face for a long time, long enough to make Victor feel irritated and impatient all over again, but before he could prompt her she said, “Are you telling me the truth? How did you know about him if nothing ever happened with you guys?”

“Well… he, uh, tried to kiss me once, but I stopped him right away because I’m really not interested in him at all,” Victor admitted. “And for the record, you guys had already broken up at that point.”

“Oh.” Alicia seemed so lost then, like she didn’t know what to do with his answer. “After you came out to us on Friday, I was so sure that it had to be you. That you were the one he’d cheated on me with.”

“Why me?” Despite himself, he could feel his temper flaring again, already on a short fuse after what had happened in the hallway. “Look, just because we both like guys doesn’t automatically mean we’re going to be into each other.”

“No, I know that,” Alicia said. “But he was obviously into _you_. I mean, I already suspected it, and now you just told me he tried to kiss you, so…”

“Yeah, well. It wasn’t me.”

They sat there in silence for a minute, and at first Victor felt so annoyed by the accusation that Alicia had just leveled at him, that he would do something as deceitful as going behind her back with her boyfriend. But the longer he thought about the situation, the more he felt his irritation begin to fade away. Alicia was just a nice girl who’d been hurt by her boyfriend lying to her, and the similarity that bore to what he’d done to Mia left him suddenly full of guilt and sympathy. He _hadn’t_ cheated on Mia, but when he thought back to what a mess he’d been then, he honestly couldn’t swear that he never would have done it if the opportunity had arisen. As it was, he’d barely broken up with her an hour before he went and kissed Benji for the first time.

Mia’s forgiveness began to mean even more to him than it already had as he took in the stoic look on Alicia’s face, the way she seemed to be carrying around a deep hurt inside of her that he hadn’t really noticed before because maybe he’d never properly looked.

“Alicia, I’m really sorry about what happened to you,” he found himself saying. She glanced quickly over at him, her dark brown eyes meeting his. “You didn’t deserve to be treated like that, no matter what Jeremy was going through.”

She nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been starting to figure that out since I broke up with him. I, uh, I had some pretty bad self-esteem issues before and I guess maybe I thought that Jeremy was the best I could do. I know now that that’s stupid. The crazy thing is I’m pretty sure that’s what me and Jeremy had in common. Like, neither one of us really valued ourselves or tried to go for what we actually wanted, and so we both just tried to stick things out together despite making each other really unhappy. He’s not always so mean and negative, you know. Sometimes when we were together he could be really funny or sweet, but then as soon as other people were around he’d change. I just wish I’d learned to care about myself sooner, before I let him hurt me as much as he did.”

“Yeah. I get that,” Victor said. “It’s strange how something as simple as loving yourself can be so hard to do sometimes.”

Alicia smiled. “I meant what I said in class on Friday. You’re really brave, Victor. And I hope that things start to get better for you soon. What happened to you just now… well, I guess that’s the reason why it’s so hard for anyone to come out here. It sucks that people feel like they have to hide who they really are just to be safe at this school.”

Despite the school day ending on such a negative note because of that shitty prank, the rest of the afternoon turned out to be surprisingly nice. Victor worked a closing shift with Benji, and it wasn’t that busy at the cafe, so they spent a lot of their time just chatting and avoiding all discussion of the drama from the last few days. Felix even popped in for awhile and sat near the counter, sipping a matcha latte and keeping Victor entertained with stories about some of the projects his Aunt Cathy was working on around their house. Apparently she was the kind of person that always had to stay busy, so in the weeks since she arrived in Brandon she’d already crocheted Felix a blanket for his bed, sewed new curtains for the living room and kitchen, prepped all the garden beds for spring planting, and begun a campaign of teaching Felix how to cook things other than scrambled eggs and grilled cheese.

“I appreciate what she’s doing,” Felix said, “and, I mean, I actually kinda want to learn to how cook, but why are we starting with crazy things like lasagna?”

“Dude, you were the one that came over and helped me learn how to make sushi rolls,” Victor reminded him.

“Yeah, with a lot of help from Youtube and your mom,” Felix pointed out. “Victor, yesterday she had a craving for dessert, so she forced me to spend, like, _three hours_ with her in the kitchen making a Baked Alaska. I didn’t even know what a Baked Alaska was until yesterday. And last week I said it might be cool to make some Mexican food, thinking she’d show me something easy like quesadillas or whatever, but she insisted on making _mole_ from scratch! Do you have any idea how many ingredients even go into a _mole_?”

“I do not,” Victor admitted. “Also, what the heck is a Baked Alaska?”

“Isn’t it that thing with ice cream covered in meringue?” Benji asked as he steamed milk for a cappuccino. “And a layer of sponge cake, right?”

At Victor’s surprised glance, Benji shrugged and explained, “Me and Mum like to watch the Bake Off.”

“Yes, that’s what it is, and when I googled it the internet told me it was one of the hardest things to make, and the internet was not lying.” Felix flopped down on the counter, resting his head on his arms in an exaggerated display of exhaustion. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

Benji gave Felix a complimentary cookie from the pastry case out of sympathy. When Felix eventually left some time later, Benji commented, “He seems pretty stressed out about his aunt being here. Are things still tough for him at home?”

“Actually, this is a really clear sign that things are finally getting better,” Victor said, and Benji frowned in confusion, so Victor explained. “This is, like, Felix Westin 101. When he’s genuinely freaked out about something, he’ll never tell you about it except under extreme duress. So the fact that he was in here complaining about his Aunt Cathy for over an hour means that things are going really well now. I bet he’s secretly loving all of their weird cooking lessons.”

“Huh. Who knew he was such a complicated guy.”

“Oh yeah. Felix contains multitudes.”

The rest of the shift passed by quietly, aside from a few Brandon High School students who showed up and did the usual staring and whispering routine that Victor was getting so sick of. The last customers left around nine twenty and Victor found himself letting out a long breath of relief as he locked the door and flipped the sign over to ‘Closed’. It had been several days since he’d last gotten to be alone with Benji for more than just ten minutes, since they’d both been too busy with other stuff to hang out on Sunday.

Victor put on a playlist while they went through the closing routine, and it just might have been his secretly Benji-themed Latin pop one since he just might have been feeling a little sappy after a long afternoon spent in Benji’s company.

In the middle of wiping down some tables, Benji started to move his feet to the rhythm of the song that started up, and Victor got distracted from the task of restocking supplies as he watched Benji dance. The way he was swaying his hips back and forth to the beat, the twisting of his arms through the air, the confidence underlying all his movements – like every other time he’d seen Benji dance, Victor found himself completely mesmerized by the sight of it.

To his surprise Benji turned to face him and began to sing along with the lyrics in perfect Spanish, leaving Victor standing there gaping at him for a second before he felt a slow smile spread over his face in response to Benji’s. The quick step rhythm of Benji’s feet began to carry him closer to Victor as he sang along with the sweet sound of Natalia Lafourcade’s voice.

“ _Ha pasado tanto tiempo,_ _f_ _inalmente descubrí tus besos. Me enredaste en tu mirada. Me abrazaste con todos mis defectos._ ” Benji was right up in front of him now, grabbing hold of Victor’s hand and pulling him in close. Despite a little initial embarrassment, Victor found himself starting to sway to the music, trying to match the pace of Benji’s movements. “ _Tú sí sabes quererme,_ _t_ _ú sí sabes adorarme,_ _m_ _i amor._ _N_ _o te vayas,_ _q_ _uédate por siempre, para siempre,_ _p_ _ara siempre amarte._ ”

Benji’s free hand wrapped around Victor’s waist, drawing him in even nearer as he sang along with the chorus. The feeling of their bodies pressed so close together, moving in sync, made Victor’s heart pound like one more percussive instrument joining the ones giving structure to the song. It was so good to let go of everything, every worry and doubt and hurtful memory, and just get lost in the feeling of being in their own private world again.

“ _Corazón, tú sí sabes_ _q_ _uererme como a mí me gusta. Soy la flor encendida que da color_ _a_ _l jardín de tu vida._ _Corazón, tú sí sabes_ _q_ _uererme como a mí me gusta. Por favor, no me dejes_ _q_ _ue soy valiente en corresponderte._ ”

“How do you know all the words?” Victor asked, amazed by the perfect fluency with which Benji was delivering the lyrics.

“What, did you think I was never going to notice that every song on this list is about love? And that you always look at me with this mushy expression on your face whenever you put it on?” Benji asked, pulling away a bit to turn and grinning back over his shoulder at Victor. “You’re not as subtle as you seem to think you are.”

“So you learned this whole song just to surprise me the next time I played it?”

Benji’s eyes were bright with affection and amusement, and instead of answering he just turned back to face Victor, rocking closer, his mouth opening to sing along with the next part. Before he could get more than a word or two out, Victor took over, his voice not nearly as smooth and strong as Benji’s but not too bad either. It felt like the next part belonged to him, anyway, was something he’d listened to alone sometimes and sang along with, thinking of Benji.

“ _Ha pasado tanto tiempo,_ _f_ _inalmente, sé que estoy dispuesta._ _E_ _s tan difícil encontrar un amor_ _q_ _ue aquí me quedo con heridas bien abiertas. Ya no me importa lo que piensan los demás. Aquí me quedo para ser testigo siempre de la vida,_ _a_ _quí por siempre, para siempre,_ _p_ _ara siempre amarnos._ ”

Benji shook his head, saying teasingly, “You’re kind of a sap, V,” so Victor shut him up with a kiss. If Victor was a sap then Benji was, too, and they both knew it.

They danced to the rest of the song, and half of one more after that, before the dancing became mostly kissing. Victor pulled back for a moment, breathlessly happy, laughing as they accidentally bumped into one of the tables and nearly knocked a chair over onto the floor. Because he was feeling so carefree just then, he started singing the chorus of the next song, eyes catching Benji’s, and found himself saying before he even realized it, “ _Yo te quiero a ti._ ”

It may have been part of the lyrics but it was obvious to both of them that it was also more than that, and Benji’s eyes went wide, his mouth dropping open just slightly. Victor’s heart was suddenly in his throat because he’d never felt like this before, never said the words to anyone in this way. But he knew he meant it and he knew he was ready to finally say it for real, so he stopped singing and repeated the sentiment, slow and sure. “ _Yo te amo._ I lo-”

He didn’t get to finish it in English before Benji was kissing him again, with one hand in Victor’s hair and the other on his hip, holding Victor as close as he could get him. The lyrics repeated themselves over and over again in the empty cafe and inside of Victor as they kissed. He’d never felt more certain of anything in his life. _Te quiero a ti, a ti, a ti._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first song that Benji sings to Victor is called ["Tú Sí Sabes Quererme"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABLT6hdgEek) by the Mexican artist Natalia Lafourcade. Here's a [link](https://genius.com/Genius-english-translations-natalia-lafourcade-tu-si-sabes-quererme-english-translation-lyrics) to a translation of the lyrics into English. The second song is ["Yo Te Quiero a Ti"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH39d2vC9kE) by the Puerto Rican musician Residente.
> 
> Tú Sí Sabes Quererme - You know how to love me. The complete phrase in the song is "Corazón, tú sí sabes quererme como a mí me gusta" which means "Sweetheart, you know how to love me the way I like to be loved".  
> Yo te quiero a ti - I love you  
> Yo te amo - I love you (this one is more romantic sounding than the former version)


	36. Second Chances

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: homophobia, bullying

Getting up for school each day was beginning to feel like preparing to go into battle. It was only Tuesday but he pulled on his coat before heading out the door like he was donning a bulletproof vest, slipping on the Chicago Black Toes in hopes that they’d bring him a little luck. Despite his best efforts at putting on a brave face, everyone else seemed to notice how tense he was. His mom said goodbye with a worried frown, actually getting up from her seat at the table to give him a quick kiss on the cheek, and even Adrian wanted to send Victor off with a hug. It was sweet of them, but it only made the dread in his belly grow that much heavier with the weight of their concern for him.

Pilar and Felix worked hard to be cheerful and distracting as Victor drove them all to school, but even their banter wasn’t quite enough to get him to relax. Unfortunately, his fears turned out to be well-founded. He’d barely been at school for ten minutes before some guy Victor recognized from the football team fake coughed the word queer and then intentionally slammed into him on his way past Victor in the hallway. The force of the blow made Victor lose his balance and he collided with a girl carrying an open can of soda, the dark liquid sloshing out all over Victor’s light green coat and completely staining one side of it. He had to go rinse it out in the bathroom, which meant that he was cold for the rest of the morning in just a t-shirt and also ended up being late to his first class.

There were a number of other little incidents that happened between first period and lunch. In his English class the girl he usually sat next to, Sarah, had switched tables without saying anything to him despite the fact that they’d been working together all year. His math teacher continued to avoid making eye contact with him in a way that was beginning to feel very deliberate. A freshman guy snapped a photo of him in the hallway, and in between third and fourth periods he overheard a couple of girls gossiping about him when he was in the middle of getting some stuff out of his locker only a few feet away. They didn’t even seem ashamed of it when he glared over at them; they just walked off like nothing had happened. It was starting to feel like ever since he’d come out he’d become public property in some way, as if everyone now felt entitled to treat him however they wanted to.

Even though all of those things seemed so minor on their own, altogether they were beginning to add up to something much bigger. Something that was threatening to wear down his defenses one whispered insult and invasive photo at a time.

The one bright point of the day was arriving at his usual table at lunch and finding Mia and Lake already sitting there. He ended up in the chair in between Mia and Benji, greeting Mia with a grin and letting his hand subtly brush up against Benji’s leg under the table as he sent him a smaller, more intimate smile. The last time he’d sat between the two of them he’d been a total disaster, freaking out over Benji’s proximity and feeling guilty that he didn’t like Mia the way he should. Everything was so different now that he was with the person he should have been with from the start. As he held Benji’s gaze for a second, memories from the night before ran through his mind, of dancing and making out and finally telling Benji that he loved him…

His thoughts were interrupted swiftly and jarringly when a guy walked past and tried to not so sneakily take a photo of him and Benji. Victor immediately felt his chest swell with outrage. He started to get out of his seat, not knowing what he was planning to do but just needing to do _something_ , only to have Benji yank him back down with a firm hand on his arm. Victor turned to his boyfriend in irritation at being held back and Benji simply stared him down unapologetically.

“Just let it go,” Benji said quietly. “It’s not worth it.”

“Hey, put that thing away before I break it!” Lake shouted after the guy, who rushed away from them guiltily. She chucked a baby carrot at his retreating back just for good measure. “Holy crap, have the people at this school always been such insensitive jerks?”

“Uh, yes,” Felix, survivor of more than ten years worth of Brandon public school harassment, confirmed. “I’ve been getting hassled since kindergarten for having the wrong clothes, being a nerd, not being especially great at sports, not having enough money… and don’t even get me started on all the Lone Stone stuff…”

Feña nodded knowingly and began ticking things off on her fingers. “Immigrant family, brown skin, speaking Spanish, being a ‘bad girl’ - whatever the fuck that means…”

“Being Asian, too nerdy, and too chubby,” Alicia joined in, her cheeks reddening a little at the admission.

Lake, who was sitting near her, put a sympathetic hand on her arm and said in a quiet voice that Victor had never heard from her before, “Me, too. That last one.”

“Being too Black for some people,” Mia added, “and not Black enough for others. Getting labeled a bitch just because I don’t say yes often enough to guys.”

“It’s just the gay thing for me,” Benji said, slow and thoughtful, “I guess I’ve been pretty privileged in most other ways.”

Victor was the only one who hadn’t shared something yet, and it felt like he’d be letting his friends down if he didn’t, so he said, “Being Latino, and not rich enough, and, uh… and for being gay.”

“God, people suck,” Lake muttered, leaning her head on her hand and looking depressed.

“It’s just because they’ve all got stuff like this, too, that they’re scared other people are going to notice. They feel safer when everyone is laughing at somebody else,” Felix explained, more tired than bitter.

“But it shouldn’t have to be like this,” Lake insisted.

Benji seemed to have something on his mind as he nodded and agreed, “No, it really shouldn’t.”

Victor’s day didn’t improve much after lunch, although what Felix had said about the reason for other people’s behavior stuck with him, reminding him whenever he felt close to losing his temper again that Felix was right. Everyone here had something to feel insecure about, something that they got teased for, and it didn’t excuse their shitty actions toward him but it did give him pause to think. It made him wonder what Joe Davis had to be nervous about when he made a stupid gay joke in History just to piss Victor off, or what his teammates were so scared of when they refused to talk to him at basketball practice.

It seemed like most of them had rushed to get changed and out on the court before Victor arrived, so by the time he showed up in the locker room there was only Andrew and a couple of other guys present. Andrew gave Victor a nod, which Victor returned before carefully keeping to himself as he got dressed.

Coach Harris ended up spending half of their practice session lecturing everyone on good sportsmanship, which was obviously well-intended, but only seemed to leave most of the guys sullen, bored, and annoyed. Teddy and Kieran’s absence felt conspicuous, especially when they did get started actually practicing. The dirty looks Victor kept getting gave him the impression that some of the guys blamed him for the team losing two members, even though it couldn’t have been more obvious that Teddy and Kieran had brought it on themselves.

When they all filed into the locker room later, there was an awkward moment where everyone just kind of stood around doing nothing, and Victor realized that none of them wanted to get undressed with him there. Despite the effort he’d been making all day to keep his temper in check, this proved to be the thing that finally broke him.

“Are you kidding me?” he shouted, staring them all down. A few people met his eyes but most of them just looked at the floor, at a random corner of the room, at their phones, anywhere but him. He shook his head in disbelief. “You all think you’re so hot I’m just going to lose my mind the second you take off your clothes? Well, guess what, _I’m not interested!_ I’m just here to play basketball, so could you guys stop acting like such total assholes all the time?”

No one said anything until Andrew snorted in amusement, and then to everyone’s surprise he grabbed the hem of his shirt, pulled it off in one swift motion, and dropped it on the floor. He held his arms wide and looked around the room at their teammates mockingly before turning back to Victor. “Feel free to look all you want, Salazar, but I should warn you that people have been known to lose their minds over this body in the past.”

For a second all Victor could do was stand there staring at him, too shocked to respond, but then he suddenly burst out laughing at just how unbelievably cocky Andrew was. The icy tension in the room cracked at the sound of Victor’s laughter. Andrew began sputtering in offense at his reaction, demanding to know why Victor thought the sight of his bare chest was so funny, which just made Victor laugh even harder. One of the guys whistled and smacked Andrew with a towel, and another one cracked a joke, and pretty soon almost everyone was laughing and talking over each other and _finally_ things began to feel normal again. One by one everyone started peeling off their clothes and heading for the showers just like they always had in the past, and hardly any of them seemed to care anymore about Victor’s presence.

It was hard not to notice that one of the few people who still seemed uncomfortable was Matt. He hadn’t reacted to Andrew’s stunt and didn’t seem interested in talking to anyone, keeping his back turned to all of them as he quickly undressed. Victor looked away at the sight of his bare skin, not wanting to be accused of checking anyone out and ruin the progress that had just been made, but out of the corner of his eye he saw Matt hurry off to the showers like he was in a rush to get out of there. Victor forced himself to put it out of his mind, since there was nothing he could do about Matt choosing to keep avoiding him. If Matt was going to be weird about this, then maybe Victor didn’t need him as a friend anyway. That’s what he told himself, at least, to ease the sting of the rejection.

After practice, Victor went home and tried to get as much of his chores and homework done as he could before five o’clock, which was when he and Simon had made plans to Facetime. The sun had come out sometime around lunch, warming things up considerably, and since he wanted some privacy for this conversation, he headed out to the pasture just before five. Beau and Elsa were already there, hurrying up to meet him as he set down a couple of buckets of feed and began to refill their trough. Once those tasks were done, he climbed up on the wooden split-rail fence underneath the oak tree and gave Simon a call.

“Victor, hey!” Simon greeted him. “How’s it going?”

“Not bad. How was your trip? Is your ankle any better?”

Simon sighed. “It’s still kinda swollen, but Bram got me this wrap for it, and I’ve been putting frozen peas on it whenever I can, so it’s not as bad as it was on Sunday. I don’t know what I was thinking with the whole skiing thing. I should have trusted my natural instinct to forever avoid any activity that requires athleticism…”

“But the trip was nice, right?”

“Oh, yeah, it was great.” He got a faraway look in his eyes. “If you ever get the chance to go away to a cabin in the mountains with your boyfriend, let me just say, I _highly_ recommend it.”

The thought of some romantic winter vacation with Benji was enough to make Victor blush, so he cleared his throat a little awkwardly and said, “I’ll, um, keep that in mind.”

Simon laughed. “Sorry, I think the weekend kind of turned my brain into mush. Anyway,” he said, his face growing more serious, “how are you doing? Have you had any more trouble at school since Saturday?”

“Nothing really bad like what the guys on my team did, but… there’s just been a lot of little stuff. People staring all the time and asking weird questions, trying to take photos of me, bumping into me on purpose. Another dumb prank involving my locker. That kind of thing,” Victor explained. “It all sounds so stupid and trivial when I say it out loud. I don’t know, maybe it’s not really a big deal…”

“It _is_ a big deal, Victor. All of that little stuff adds up. It’s okay to feel stressed out or angry about all of it.”

Victor’s jaw clenched as his mind ran through every incident, however big or small, that had happened since he came out on Friday. “Yeah. To be honest, I have been feeling really angry most of the time. It’s like… like they don’t see me as a person anymore, you know? I’ve just become Victor the Gay Kid and they have all these strange ideas about what that actually means.”

Simon nodded knowingly. “Like they’re just seeing a stereotype when they look at you now, instead of seeing you for who you are.”

“Exactly,” Victor agreed, relieved that Simon understood what he was trying to say so easily.

“Something happened to me, too, right after I got outed. These two jerks dressed up like me and the only other out gay guy at school and put on this disgusting performance pretending to be us in front of everyone in the cafeteria.” Simon drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, and it was obvious that even years later the memory still hurt. “I did try to get them to stop, but in the end I didn’t really have to do anything. A teacher showed up right away and they got hauled off to the Vice Principal’s office to get lectured on how to not be intolerant dicks. The staff at my high school were actually pretty great most of the time about dealing with bullies and stuff like that.

Beau had finished off his food and wandered over to Victor, nosing at his pockets in search of treats. Victor handed him an apple slice and absentmindedly stroked his mane as he considered what Simon had just said.

“I don’t think waiting for the teachers to handle it is going to work at my school,” Victor admitted. “So far most of them seem to just ignore stuff like this. The only one that’s made an effort so far is my basketball coach, but I think the talk he gave all of us this afternoon just annoyed the other guys more than it actually taught them anything. I know he means well, but it seems like he has no idea what he’s doing.”

“It sounds like the teachers at your school need better training.”

“Yeah, that’s what Benji’s dad said on Saturday. I guess maybe my mom and Benji’s parents can try to bring it up with the P. T. A., but… honestly, I just want to figure out how to get through the week, you know? All that other stuff sounds like it’s going to take forever, and I’m kind of worried about our parents just drawing more attention to us by kicking up a big fuss over this.”

“Sometimes that’s the only way you can really get stuff to change,” Simon argued. He sighed, running a hand over his hair, and there was a lot of sympathy in his eyes when they met Victor’s. “I get what you’re saying, though. I wish I had some good advice for you about how to deal with this stuff, but I’m not sure I know what to say… I guess for one thing, don’t write off the teachers too fast. Some of them might be more helpful than you think if you just tell them what’s happening. Otherwise… I don’t know. Keep your friends and allies close. Remember that they’re the ones whose opinions matter most, not the ignorant jerks of the world.

“Oh, and it might help to keep in mind that as much as things suck for you right now, what you did – coming out, showing everyone at your school that you’re proud of who you are – that’s probably helping other queer kids in a bunch of ways that you can’t even see. We don’t always get a lot of role models, unfortunately. I think when I was a teenager all of my ideas about what it meant to be gay came from TV shows and movies, but most of it was kinda dumb stuff, and I didn’t know a lot of older queer people in real life. But there was this other gay kid at my school, Ethan, the one I mentioned earlier. He came out a couple of years before I did. I remember feeling a little jealous of him back then because it seemed like coming out was so easy for him. Yeah, people teased him and stuff, but he always knew exactly what to say to shut them down. He never let anyone see how hard it actually was for him. But him being out made things a little easier for me and Bram. A lot of that sensitivity training the teachers got apparently started around the time Ethan came out in order to make the school a safer place for him, but really it made it a safer place for all of us.”

Victor didn’t really see his choice to come out on Friday to Matt and Alicia as some big political move, or something altruistic, or whatever, but he remembered how he’d felt envious of Benji’s confidence on the first day they met, and there was the way he’d sought out Simon because – well, because Simon was right, he didn’t exactly have a lot of role models. He definitely got how important it was to see other people like him, to hear their stories, like the ones that Benji, Simon, Bram, Justin, Ivy, and Kim had shared with him. It was more than just comforting or something, it felt like a necessity that he would’ve had a very hard time living without. And those stories would never have been told if those people hadn’t made the choice to come out in the first place.

“That does help, actually,” Victor said. He thought of Jeremy then and wondered how many other closeted kids there were at Brandon High School who were too scared to be themselves. Most of them probably didn’t have an abusive parent to fear the way Jeremy did, so they were most likely hiding simply because they didn’t feel safe being out at school. Maybe Victor and Benji being out would somehow make things better for those other people.

He’d been ignoring Beau for a few minutes while he listened to Simon’s advice, and he yelped suddenly as Beau got impatient waiting for another treat and just started trying to chew on Victor’s jacket. He pushed at the horse’s head, trying to detach him, but Beau could be extremely stubborn when he wanted to be and refused to let go.

“Everything okay over there?” Simon asked, at the same time that Victor heard his mother’s voice from behind him saying, “ _Todo bien?_ ”

“Uh, _si_ , yeah, _todo bien_ ,” Victor stammered, not really sure who he was talking to or which language he was speaking, too flustered by his mom’s sudden arrival and the effort he was making to remove his jacket from Beau’s mouth without tearing it. When he finally managed to tug it free it was covered in spit and there was a hole near the pocket. How had he ended up with two ruined coats in one day?

“Oh, are you talking to someone?” Isabel asked as she walked up to him. He turned to face her, feeling oddly guilty at having been discovered with Simon despite the fact that there was no good reason to be.

“Um, yeah, it’s just a friend,” he answered, and his mom raised her brows at how weird he was acting.

“Okay…” she trailed off, eyes narrowed as she tried to get a better look at the phone. “Victor, you okay?” Simon said. “Do you need to go now?”

“Yeah, uh, my mom’s here. I’ll talk to you later, all right?”

Simon said goodbye and Victor hung up on him awkwardly. He shrugged off his filthy jacket, draping it over the fence, and tried not to fidget as he waited for his mom to start asking questions. He didn’t have to wait long.

“Who was that?”

“Simon. A friend of mine.”

“Uh huh. A friend from school?”

He shifted nervously. “No, not exactly. He actually lives in New York.” Isabel crossed her arms over her chest and waited for him to explain. “I, uh, kinda met him online. He’s been, like, giving me advice and stuff… um, about coming out. We’ve been talking since September.”

The look of suspicion on Isabel’s face didn’t really improve at all with this admission. “And just how old is this Simon?”

“Um, twenty-one? I think?”

He cringed as he watched her brows climb even higher. “ _Twenty-one?_ I’m sorry, are you telling me right now that you’ve been secretly talking to some older guy on the internet for the last _five months_?”

Victor’s face flushed in indignation at what she was implying. “ _Mami_ , it’s not like that. Simon’s just a friend. I have a boyfriend, remember? And so does he. Anyway, _I_ was the one that contacted _him_ , because I needed help figuring stuff out."

“But how did you even find this guy in the first place?” Isabel demanded.

There was no way he was going to be let off the hook without telling her the full story of how he’d heard about Simon through Benji, and then Isabel wanted details about the kind of stuff they’d been discussing, but finally after laying it all out to her she seemed to have calmed down about the whole thing.

“He really is just a friend,” Victor repeated firmly. “I, um, I was having a pretty hard time figuring things out and – and learning to accept myself. But Simon and his friends helped me a lot. They understand what I’ve been going through and they’ve been there for me when, uh… when things have been hard.”

The last of Isabel’s disapproval seemed to melt away at that, and she leaned back against the fence next to him, staring off into the distance pensively. The sun was pretty low on the horizon at this point, very nearly touching the long, flat line of the earth, and as soon as it began to dip below it would be too cold to sit around outside without his jacket. Even so, neither of them seemed to be in any hurry to rush the conversation. It was nice to just sit there next to her, Victor realized, and to listen to the sound of Elsa’s hooves kicking at the hard soil, the high-pitched note of a bird singing in the branches overhead. He wasn’t sure when they’d last been together quietly like this – when he’d last allowed it after the months of distance he’d imposed between them in the wake of her affair. But things felt different now. Her presence was welcome in a way that it hadn’t been then and he knew that it was the love and acceptance she’d shown him that had changed everything. Maybe, without even being fully aware of it, he’d finally begun to forgive her.

“There was something I wanted to speak to you about,” Isabel said, surprising him. He’d been expecting her to dig deeper into his friendship with Simon, or to ask him what he meant about his coming out process being difficult. He wondered if maybe she still wasn’t ready to hear all the details yet, despite the effort she’d been making in the past week to do better for him.

She pulled a piece of paper out of her pocket and held it out to him. He took it and unfolded it slowly, his breath catching when he skimmed over the familiar text.

“I found this when I was doing your laundry this morning,” Isabel explained. “ _Mijo_ – why would you have something like that?”

Victor’s fingers tightened on the edge of the paper, wrinkling one of the phone numbers written there. He had them all programmed into his phone, anyway, in case of an emergency, so it didn’t really matter if the paper itself got damaged.

“It was just…” He trailed off, not knowing how to explain what he’d been afraid of for so long. Telling her now almost felt like confessing to a betrayal. He didn’t really want to admit that he’d had moments when he’d doubted their love for him; that sometimes he’d expected the worst of them.

“You-” Isabel’s voice broke on the word, and she had to clear her throat before trying again, “you didn’t really think you needed something like this, did you?”

He stared helplessly down at the paper in his hands and whispered, “I didn’t know…”

Isabel was silent for a long time, and when Victor finally felt brave enough to look up at her again, he could see tear tracks painting vertical stripes down her face, bright in the orange glow of the sunset. She had her arms wrapped tightly around her own waist, hugging her ribs, and she didn’t make a sound as she cried. Victor folded the paper again and stuffed it into his back pocket, as if it could be as simple as that to take all the evidence of his doubts and make it disappear.

“I’m sorry,” Victor said quietly. Beau side-stepped over to him then, flicking his tail and pressing his nose up against Victor’s arm in a request for attention, so Victor stroked his forehead and mane, running his fingers over the long, coarse strands of chocolatey-brown hair. It felt easier to reach out to Beau than it did to his mom at that moment, guilt flooding through him at the sight of her pained face, even though he wasn’t quite sure what he’d done wrong.

“How could you ever think that we’d-” Isabel looked over at him, eyes fierce despite the way they shone wetly in the half-light. “Victor, we’d never, _never_ do something like that. Never. Not in a million years. I don’t care how angry and upset your father is about this whole thing, or how much I struggled with it at first – _this is your home_. It will _always_ be your home, and we will never not want you here. Do you understand that? Never, _mi amor_.”

She moved to stand in front of him and pulled him swiftly into her arms, holding him tightly. Beau startled a little, shifting away from them and huffing noisily in irritation now that he was no longer being petted. Victor hugged his mom back and told her again, gently, so as not to break her heart anymore than he already had, “I just didn’t know.”

Each day that week felt like a genuine struggle to get through without losing his temper explosively at school. There had definitely been some close calls, like when a couple of guys in P. E. had been assholes about having the lockers next to his, or when April Levinson, the girl he’d gone on a single awkward date with during freshman year came up to ask him if the only reason he’d liked her was because she was a tomboy. It seemed like she was in the midst of some kind of crisis over it, freaked out that she was too masculine or something, and Victor had to spend ten painful minutes reassuring her that the reason he hadn’t continued trying to date her was because she wasn’t actually masculine _enough_ – or rather, because she wasn’t actually a guy.

Fortunately, on Wednesday he had therapy with Jake, in which they’d discussed the situation at school and some strategies for dealing with it. When Victor had once again tried to downplay all the stuff that had been happening as minor and unimportant, Jake explained the concept of microaggressions to him and how all of those little stressors could begin to take a large toll over time. He helped Victor come up with some healthy ways of relieving stress and reminded him of the importance of self-care in order to get through the difficult early days of being out at school, but also as something that he should continue to practice and get better at long-term. It was really helpful but he still struggled in the following days to remember what Jake had said in the moments when he felt most likely to snap and lose control of his temper again. The ideas made sense in his head, it was just actually applying them in real life that turned out to be the hardest part.

Thursday had been the worst, because something happened that day which was bad enough to push him over the edge despite everything he’d learned from Jake. He’d been passing through the hallway in between classes when he’d caught sight of Teddy and Kieran cornering Mia next to her locker, and from the look on her face she was not at all pleased by whatever they were saying to her. Teddy looked over and noticed Victor walking in their direction, his eyes narrowing with spite and resentment.

“Guess all those guys that have been chasing after you better reconsider,” Teddy said mockingly, speaking to Mia even as his gaze remained locked on Victor, voice loud enough to carry. “Can’t have been that good after all if Salazar decided sucking dick would be more fun-”

Victor saw red. In a flash he was over there, slamming Teddy up against the locker, his hand balled up into a fist and ready to really hit him this time. Teddy had clearly been expecting this reaction though, and he grabbed Victor by the shoulders and flipped them, Victor’s back connecting hard with the metal surface. Just as swiftly Teddy was drawing his own fist back, and the only thing that stopped the punch from landing was the arrival of Mr. Williams, the English teacher, who dragged Teddy backward and held him there while he struggled to get free.

“Mr. Anderson, that’s _enough_ ,” Mr. Williams said forcefully, and Teddy finally stopped resisting. Mr. Williams let him go cautiously, but kept himself positioned just slightly in front of Teddy, ready to block him if he tried to go after Victor again. “Both of you can follow me to Principal Meyers office. _Immediately_.”

“Hey, he’s the one that shoved me first-” Teddy burst out indignantly.

“Oh, right, because you obviously weren’t doing anything wrong-” Victor yelled back.

“Just stop, Victor,” Mia said quietly but firmly. She seemed nearly as furious as he was, but there was an underlying hurt there that had Victor instantly shutting his mouth. All around them a circle of onlookers had formed, many of them with their phones out, watching and whispering like they always were those days. Victor was so fucking sick of all of them.

“I think you’d better come with us, Ms. Brooks,” Mr. Williams said.

The three of them ended up sitting in the receptionist’s area outside of Principal Meyers’ office for fifteen minutes while they waited for him to get back from another meeting. Victor and Mia took the chairs on the opposite side of the room from Teddy, who mostly glowered out the window and ignored them. Just the sight of him there a few feet away was infuriating, and Victor couldn’t get the awful words Teddy had thrown at Mia out of his head. It got all tangled up with his memories of their confrontation on Saturday, leaving him sitting there in silence with his arms crossed over his chest, seething.

When Meyers finally showed up, he had each of them come into his office separately to give their account of what had happened. Mia went first and left about five minutes later, looking worn out and withdrawn. The fact that she was going through all of this because of him filled Victor with guilt. He’d already caused her enough pain; it was so unfair that she had to suffer now, too, just because Teddy knew that targeting her would piss Victor off. After Mia was Teddy, who marched out of the office after a much longer period looking like he despised Victor even more than he had before he’d gone in.

“This isn’t over, Salazar,” Teddy muttered, quiet enough not to be overheard by Meyers or his secretary as he passed by. Victor glared after him, too angry just then to be the least bit frightened by the threat.

Finally it was Victor’s turn. He sat down in the chair in front of Principal Meyers’ desk and quickly scanned the room. There were a couple of framed diplomas on the wall, along with an orange and white Texas Longhorns jersey. On his desk were a couple of family photos and a potted plant. It all looked about as bland as Principal Meyers himself, a tall, large man who used to coach football before taking on his current role. This was the first time Victor had ever been called into the principal’s office or even really spoken with him, and some part of him felt a little uneasy about it, but mostly he was just frustrated that all of this was happening because Teddy was continuing to be such a homophobic jerk.

“So, Victor, care to tell me what happened?” Meyers asked.

Victor told his version of the events, which didn’t take long considering it had all happened so quickly. He didn’t repeat exactly what Teddy had said to Mia, since he couldn’t actually bring himself to say it out loud. Meyers just sat back and listened dispassionately.

“I understand there was also an incident involving yourself and Mr. Anderson last Saturday, is that right?”

Victor nodded, and when Meyers prompted him he explained about the prank and the argument in the locker room. Throughout all of this Meyers listened and occasionally nodded, but it was impossible to guess how he felt about any of it.

“All right. I appreciate how forthright you’ve been about everything, Mr. Salazar. I would like to remind you that we have a zero-tolerance policy for violence at this school, and today marks the second time that you have gotten into a physical altercation with Mr. Anderson. As such, I’ll have you both serve detention this Saturday and the following one, and I would seriously recommend that you steer clear of each other in the future if you can’t control your tempers around one another. I’d also like to ask that you do whatever you can to smooth things over with your teammates so we don’t end up losing any more players or find ourselves canceling games again in the future.”

For a second Victor just sat there and stared at him in confusion. “Wait, that’s it?” he found himself asking.

Meyers frowned. “What do you mean? Two detentions aren’t enough for you?”

“No, I mean – what about the rest of it? Don’t you care about the homophobic stuff that Teddy’s been saying, or what he wrote on my locker?”

“I’ve already discussed those things with Coach Harris,” Meyers said dismissively. “We’re working on the best way to respond to it.”

Victor opened his mouth to say something more, but before he could Meyers cut in again loudly.

“I believe you’re late for your next class, Mr. Salazar. We will contact your parents later with details about serving your detentions.”

The rest of the school day passed by in a haze after that, since Victor couldn’t stop obsessing over what had happened with Teddy and how little Principal Meyers seemed to care about the root of the problem. He was obviously more concerned with the success of the basketball team than he was with the issue of Victor getting bullied just for being gay. He remembered what Benji had told him the week before, about how hard Amelia had had to fight to get Tom Davis suspended after he’d attacked Benji at Homecoming. Clearly that zero-tolerance policy for violence wasn’t as strict when it applied to punishing a star football player for a homophobic act, Victor thought bitterly.

When he got home later that day, Isabel locked eyes with him the minute he walked through the front door and said, “ _Tu cuarto_. _Ahora mismo_.”

He swallowed hard, his heart already beginning to race at her tone. Pilar was sitting on the couch nearby, and she glanced over at him with a surprised, worried look on her face.

“What happened?” Pilar asked.

“Not right now, _mija_ ,” Isabel said without looking away from Victor. She nodded her head towards his bedroom. “Let’s go.”

As soon as he and Isabel were in his room with the door closed, she put her hands on her hips and stared him down expectantly.

“I received a phone call from Principal Meyers’ office this afternoon. Apparently you got into a shoving match with another boy in the middle of the hallway today?” When Victor hung his head and didn’t bother trying to deny it, she let out an exasperated breath. “Victor Manuel, you’d better start explaining _immediately_.”

“I was just walking to class when Teddy said something really disgusting about me and Mia,” Victor told her.

“So you pushed him into a locker?” Victor nodded, and Isabel pursed her lips in disappointment. “Victor, I know you’ve always been a little hot-headed, but you have never been the kind of boy that resorts to violence. This isn’t like you. What exactly did Teddy say that made you so angry?”

Victor bit his lip, looking away to the corner of the room uncomfortably. “He just – he was basically saying that Mia wasn’t good enough and that’s why I’m into guys.”

“Oh.”

Even Isabel, who was usually so sure of herself, seemed uncertain about how to respond to that. She hesitated for a moment, clearly processing the information, and then said, “Okay. Look, what Teddy said was really hurtful and ignorant, and I get that you’re probably already angry at him after what happened on Saturday. But Victor, you cannot react to stuff like this with violence. I would think that after what happened last fall between your father and his boss you would have learned that violence is never a good solution to a problem. All it ends up doing is creating even _more_ problems which will be even harder to solve.”

She was right, and the truth was that Victor already felt ashamed of the way he’d acted earlier that day. It really wasn’t the kind of person he wanted to be, and the reminder of all the disastrous consequences that had followed Armando’s attack on his boss just made him feel even worse about having obviously inherited some of his father’s anger issues.

“I’m really sorry,” he told her. “I swear I won’t let it happen again.”

“What’s been going on lately? Have people been giving you a hard time at school since you came out?”

“It’s just been a bunch of dumb stuff mostly,” Victor said. “It’s not a big deal.”

Isabel’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of ‘dumb stuff’ exactly?”

He shifted on his feet, staring down at the new Jordans which he still hadn’t taken off yet since Isabel had pretty much pounced on him the second he walked in the door. It was awkward standing there in the middle of his room in front of her, with her eyes constantly on him, scrutinizing his every facial expression for clues about what was going on. He knew she was just worried about him, but that only made him more reluctant to tell her about all of it. She would just be even likelier to storm the school on some kind of anti-bullying campaign, which would draw _more_ attention to him, and that was the last thing he needed at the moment.

“Just, like, people calling me names, gossiping, that kind of thing.”

“That’s it? There hasn’t been anything more serious?”

“Um. Not really.” It wasn’t even a lie, exactly – sure some people had bumped into him on purpose, and there was the other locker prank – but ninety percent of what was going on actually _was_ just a lot of little stuff that wasn’t worth getting his mom all worked up over.

“You will tell me if anything happens, right? I’m serious, Victor. You have to promise me right now that you won’t just try to deal with it by yourself.”

“Okay,” he said, and when she raised a brow pointedly he added, “I promise.”

She pulled him into a side-hug, pressing a kiss against his forehead. “I’m so sorry that you have to deal with stuff like this. You don’t deserve it, _cari_ _ñ_ _o_.”

On her way out of the room, she paused in the doorway. “There really hasn’t been anything else, has there?”

That look in her eye – that was fear, wasn’t it? Victor hadn’t seen it very often, not from his mother. She was usually so strong, so self-assured. Knowing that her concern for him had crossed the line at some point into being afraid for him left him feeling sick to his stomach.

“No,” he said with the most reassuring smile he could manage. “No, there’s nothing else.”

Later that evening, when the four of them were eating dinner, Isabel set her silverware down for a moment and said, “There’s something I need to discuss with you guys.”

Victor immediately felt himself tense up, since historically over the past few months most of the announcements that had been made at the dinner table had been upsetting in some way. Pilar and Adrian must have looked similarly nervous, because Isabel sighed and said, “Relax, it’s nothing bad. It’s just that, uh, I was talking on the phone with your father yesterday-”

“ _Papi_?” Adrian interrupted. His face lit up with a hope that made Victor’s heart ache, all of the guilt he’d been plagued by since his father left hitting him full force.

Isabel gave him a small, strained smile. “He said that he really misses you guys, and he’d like to come here and see you this Saturday.”

“Yay, _Papi’s_ coming home!” Adrian cheered, grinning with excitement as he started to bounce around in his chair.

“He’s just visiting, _mijo_ ,” Isabel told him gently, “remember what we talked about? He’s still going to live with Tio Nicolas for now. And after that he’ll get his own place.”

“So he’s only coming on Saturday?” Adrian asked, immediately crestfallen.

The sick, twisted-up feeling in Victor’s gut was getting to be too much, and he felt pinned down by the looks of concern he kept getting from Isabel and Pilar. He stood up quickly and mumbled, “I, uh – I have some homework to do,” and then rushed toward the hallway. Before he could get out of the room, though, Isabel called out, “Victor, wait.”

He stopped reluctantly and turned to look back at her.

“You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to,” she said, so carefully neutral. “It’s up to you. But, uh – he said that he’d like to talk to you, if you’re willing.”

Victor nodded in acknowledgment and then hurried away to his bedroom. As soon as he was alone he flopped down on his back in bed and stared up at the ceiling. He should probably think about whether he would see his father on Saturday. It was only a day away and he’d have to make a decision about it one way or the other. But the day had been so long and so shitty that he simply wasn’t ready to process that on top of everything else.

So instead of dealing with the thorny issue of his father, he pulled out his phone and started scrolling through Instagram instead, swiping by one photo of happy, smiling people living their best lives after another. He couldn’t help wondering if any of it was real, if any of them had to deal with absent parents, or families that felt like they were falling apart at the seams, or getting harassed by their peers for something that was beyond their control. Felix had said that everyone had something they struggled with, but sometimes it was so hard to see that, and all these perfectly curated images of happiness just made him feel inescapably lonely.

He closed the app, and laid there staring at the screen for a moment, not really knowing what to do with himself, when to his surprise a text message from Mia popped up.

_Hey, how are you doing? I was just wondering if you were free for coffee tomorrow after school_

Victor read the message three times in a row, unable to believe that Mia actually still wanted anything to do with him after what had happened earlier that day.

_Sure! I have basketball practice until 4 but any time after that is good_

She replied right away with a time and location, and that was how he ended up walking into a little cafe near Brandon College the following day with Mia at his side.

“I kinda feel like I’m cheating on Brasstown by coming in here,” Victor joked as he and Mia carried their drinks over to a small table by the window.

Mia smiled and said, “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

The interior of this cafe was cutesier and a little more feminine looking than Brasstown, all white woodwork and pastel colored walls, with bright bundles of fake flowers gathered in small porcelain vases on the tables. The music was pretty much the same though – in fact, Victor recognized the song that was drifting out of the speakers as one of the ones from the playlist at work. He sipped his cappuccino and wished that it was a little bit stronger, like the ones that Benji had taught him to make.

“This place is, uh, cute,” Victor commented.

“Sorry, I know it’s not as good as Brasstown,” Mia said, poking at one of the plastic flowers on their table. “But I kinda thought you might not want to hang out at work on your day off.”

“No, no, this is perfect,” Victor rushed to say, and when Mia shot him a skeptical look they both laughed. “Okay, it does kind of look like it was decorated by my _abuela_ , but the coffee’s decent. So, uh…”

There was an awkward pause. Victor couldn’t help feeling a little bit like he was back on a date with Mia again, except now that he’d gone through the whole coming out process and was no longer in denial about what he really wanted, he was fully aware of the not-quite-right feeling in his gut that being in a romantic situation with a girl inspired. It was hard to believe that he’d ever gotten that feeling confused with the kind of butterflies that were the result of genuine attraction.

“This is weird, isn’t it,” Mia said, stating the obvious.

“Maybe a little,” Victor admitted. “Sorry. It just…”

“Feels too much like a date?”

“Yeah.” He laughed a bit self-consciously.

“Well, sorry to take you somewhere so dorky and then be really awkward on our very first not-date as friends,” Mia said self-deprecatingly. “I guess I’m still working on replacing Straight Victor with Gay Victor in my head.”

He nodded. “Yeah, uh, I think I’m still kind of in the middle of that process, too.”

Mia took a slow sip of her latte, eyeing him thoughtfully over the rim of the cup. She kept her hands wrapped around it as if to keep them warm as she said, “You seem like you’re doing a lot better, though. Like you know who you are now.”

“I am,” he agreed, “I am doing better. It feels like maybe I’m really able to just be me now, for the first time in in my life.”

There might have been a hint of sadness in Mia’s eyes, but if there was it was hard to see past the genuine warmth in her smile. “That’s great. I’m so happy for you, Victor.”

He couldn’t help remembering the day before and how tired she had looked as she’d left Principal Meyers’ office. He wondered if she’d been replaying the incident with Teddy over and over again in her head the way he had been, or if she’d been just as tense at school earlier that day as he was, looking out for Teddy and Kieran everywhere he went. Somehow he’d gotten through the day without running into either of them, but he really hadn’t needed the added stress of wondering what they might do next when he already had so much else to deal with.

“Hey, um, I’m really sorry about what happened yesterday,” he said quietly. Mia had been adding a little extra sugar to her coffee, but she looked up then with narrowed eyes.

“Why are you apologizing for it?”

“It’s just that… well, you know it wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for me.”

Mia pursed her lips, setting down the spoon she’d been using carefully on the side of her plate. “Teddy being an asshole has nothing to do with you, Victor. That was his bad choice to make.”

Victor nodded, and maybe rationally he knew she was right, that Teddy was the one who was truly at fault, but some part of him didn’t really believe it. It still felt like he was responsible in some way for her getting hurt yet again.

“To be honest, I was kind of surprised that you wanted to hang out with me today,” he admitted. “I figured you wouldn’t want to see me after that.”

“Look,” Mia said with a sigh, “what happened between us last fall hurt me a lot, but I’ve had time to think about it, and I’m ready to move past it now. I really like you, Victor, and I know that you’re a good person. That’s why I want to give you a second chance. But none of that stuff has anything to do with what happened yesterday. That was just Teddy being a jerk, and it’s not something that you need to apologize to me for. Although, in the future, please do not come rushing in to push people around in order to protect me – okay? I can take care of myself.”

“Yeah, I know you can, and I’m sorry about that,” Victor said. He hesitated for a moment, still feeling a little uncertain about the rest of it, but the strength of Mia’s conviction finally convinced him to accept what she was saying. “Okay. And, uh, thanks. For being willing to give me a second chance.”

That brought the smile back to Mia’s face. “Of course. I’m actually really excited about trying out this whole friendship thing with you. I think it’s gonna be really great.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

After that it felt easy to just talk with Mia. Easier than it ever had been before, in fact, because now he could enjoy hanging out with her without any of the pressure or guilt he’d always felt around her in the past. Mia spent a while updating him on everything that had been going on with her in the last two months, including her soon to be stepmom Veronica’s pregnancy which she’d still been struggling to accept, and all the stress of the wedding preparations that were now in full swing.

“I can’t believe that between the two of them, my dad is the one that’s turning into a total bridezilla these days,” Mia complained. Their coffees had been served with small cookies, and Mia dunked hers somewhat aggressively into her latte before taking a bite of it. It had been awhile since Victor had last seen her get so animated about something, and it was pretty entertaining. “Like, who even cares whether the plates have silver or gold trim? Or what kind of napkin ring they choose? Literally no one! The wedding’s not even happening for another two months anyway, I don’t know why he’s acting like everything has to be perfect right this minute.”

Victor hid a fond smile behind his cup and tried to look sympathetic. “So are they going to make you do anything special? Like be one of the bridesmaids or something?”

Mia rolled her eyes. “Veronica is insisting that I should be the maid of honor, which is ridiculous because obviously her sister will never forgive her if she chooses me over her, and anyway isn’t it kind of weird for a woman in her late thirties to have a teenager as a maid of honor?” Mia paused to let out a long sigh. “Sorry, I’m rambling, aren’t I? I can stop now.”

“No, it’s okay, I don’t mind,” Victor reassured her.

“No really, let’s talk about something else. It’s bad enough that I can’t escape from all the wedding craziness at home, I don’t need to obsess over it when I’m out of the house, too. Tell me about you instead. I’m guessing a lot has happened since November.”

“Um. Yeah. I don’t even know where to start,” Victor said.

Mia smiled playfully. “Start with the good stuff, then. How are things going with Benji?”

He blinked at her in surprise. It was hard to believe after how upset she’d been last fall when she’d found out about them that she was actually interested in hearing the details of his new relationship now. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” she said resolutely. “It’s been two months since we broke up, Victor. I can handle it. Seeing you guys together was hard at first, but now… I don’t know, it’s kind of therapeutic I guess? It helps with the whole process eliminating Straight Victor from my head.”

“So that means you want to talk about boys with me?” Victor asked incredulously.

“It does seem to be the most effective way of getting rid of him.” She took a sip of her latte and raised her brows at him expectantly. “Well?”

“Well…” he trailed off reluctantly. “Things with Benji are good. Really good.” He couldn’t quite hold back the slow smile that was spreading across his face at the thought of just _how_ good everything was with them.

“Wow.” Mia shook her head at him, her eyes sparkling. “You’ve got it bad, haven’t you? I wasn’t expecting it to be _that_ easy to get rid of Straight Victor, but he is long gone already.”

“Okay, but what about you?” Victor deflected, his cheeks growing hot.

“What about me?”

“Have you tried going out with anyone new?”

Mia hesitated, and at first Victor wondered if he’d gone a little too far. Things were still so new with them and maybe Mia didn’t trust him enough yet to open up about something so personal. But then she sighed, pushing around the empty sugar packet with her spoon, and said, “No, but… I don’t know, there might be someone that I’m interested in. I’m just not sure yet if I want to give it a try or not.”

“Why not?”

“Because things are a little complicated, I guess. He’s liked me for a really long time, and we have some history, but I’ve never really been sure how I feel about him. I think he’s a good guy, deep down, it’s just that the way he acts around other people can be… a major turn off.”

Victor wasn’t sure if he should ask, but his curiosity got the best of him. “Are you talking about Andrew Spencer?”

The way Mia’s eyes went wide with shock was confirmation enough, but then she said, “How did you know that?”

“I already knew that he liked you,” Victor explained, “and I think you’re right, about him being a good guy. He doesn’t always act that way, but when it really matters he does. Actually, he, uh…” Victor paused, unsure if he really wanted to talk about it, but in the end he remembered the support he’d gotten from Andrew lately and felt like maybe he owed this to him. “Last Saturday, the reason the basketball game got canceled was because Teddy and Kieran wrote some homophobic crap all over my locker with spray paint. No one else on the team was willing to stand up for me except Andrew, and he did it again earlier this week at practice. It actually really helped to get the other guys to relax a little around me.”

“Oh. That’s… that was really decent of him.”

Victor smiled at the thoughtful look on Mia’s face. “Maybe you should give him a chance?”

“I’ll think about it,” Mia said slowly. Her expression turned sad as she met his eyes again. “You’ve really been having a hard time at school lately, haven’t you? Since you came out. Did you tell your family, too?”

“Yeah. About two weeks ago.”

“How did it go?”

“Not great.” He finished off the last of his cappuccino, trying not to think too hard about all that had happened. “Most of my family has accepted me, though. My mom struggled a little at first, but she’s doing a lot better now, and Pilar and my little brother are totally fine with it. It’s just, um… It’s just my dad that can’t deal with it. He left, actually. He was going to move out anyway, because my parents are separating, but he left last week the day after I told them.”

“Oh god, Victor, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Mia sympathized. “Are you doing okay?”

He shrugged. There was no way to easily answer that question, aside from admitting that he wasn’t really okay with it at all. “He’s coming to visit us tomorrow, I guess. My mom said he wants to talk to me but I’m not sure if I want to see him.”

Mia was nodding, but there was a distant, slightly closed off look about her that had him remembering what she’d said to him in the past about her own absent parent. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I really shouldn’t be complaining to you about this when your mom went through so much and then ended up disappearing on you.”

They’d been talking so long at this point that the sun was beginning to set, although it was hard to tell with the thick, overcast skies that blocked out most of the light. The passing of time was marked instead by the way the world outside the window grew dimmer and dimmer in comparison to the brightness of the cafe. A nearby lamp was casting Mia’s face half in shadow, making it a little harder to read the look in her eyes.

“Victor… my mom wasn’t actually an addict.”

“Oh, but – I thought you said-”

“I know what I told you before, but the truth is she was just this young, free-spirited artist who settled down too fast with my dad, a college professor that was nearly ten years older than her. Everything they did was my dad’s idea – getting married, moving into a big house, having a baby – none of it was really something that she had ever wanted for herself. So, that’s why she left, because she couldn’t stand to be trapped in that big, empty house. With me.”

Victor frowned, trying to make sense of this. Mia was clearly working so hard to maintain her composure, which seemed like such a delicate, carefully crafted thing, and his heart ached with the knowledge of how much pain must be hidden beneath it.

“So why did you tell me that she was an addict?”

“It was easier, I guess. It hurts too much to admit that – that I wasn’t enough to make her stay.”

Mia’s words felt like they belonged to him, too. He knew exactly what that was like, that awful realization that you weren’t wanted, that who you were wasn’t enough. His father had said it so softly, had almost whispered the words – _“What if I can’t, Isa? What if I can’t accept this?”_

“But hey,” Mia said, reaching out to place her hand on top of his. It was the first time they’d touched in so long, and he realized that he’d missed it. Being close to Mia had always felt nice, and now he understood that it was nice in the same way that getting a hug from Felix was nice, because maybe there were some people in the world that you were just meant to be friends with. She squeezed his hand a little and said, “I know that what happened with your dad is a lot, but I saw him at your basketball game, and at your birthday party, and that man _definitely_ loves you. So, maybe just try to give him a chance tomorrow?”

Mia’s mom had run away from her with no explanation and no goodbye, in an act of selfish cruelty that Mia would probably never really get over. And Felix, too, had grown up without one of his parents, after his dad had just disappeared one day when he was a baby. What would Mia or Felix give to have the chance to see their parents again? And here was his own father, hoping to speak with him and somehow work things out. Maybe it would be stupid to just throw that away.

“Okay,” Victor said. “I’ll try.”

She pulled her hand away in order to finish off her latte, her eyes meeting his like she was proud of him, and he couldn’t help but feel incredibly grateful to have her back in his life again.

“You know, your mom was a total idiot for not realizing what she was walking away from.”

Mia’s hand froze, her cup halfway in between her mouth and the table, and she stared back at him in surprise. Then she sighed and shook her head at him. “All right, stop being so sweet. I’m getting hit with Straight Victor feels all over again.”

Victor blushed and laughed a little in embarrassment. “Um. Sorry?”

A little while later they stood up from the table, slipping on their coats, and began to head toward the door. Before they stepped out into the gray evening outside, Victor hesitantly reached out and pulled Mia into a hug. He was a little worried at first that it might not be okay, but Mia quickly hugged him back, and when they pulled apart she was smiling brightly up at him.

“I really missed you,” Victor admitted.

There was forgiveness, and friendship, and so much warmth in Mia’s voice as she said, “I missed you, too.”


	37. Las Noches Más Bellas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: homophobia, bullying
> 
> The title for this chapter comes from a line in the song "Nuestra Luna" by the Puerto Rican musician Sylvia Rexach. The song title means "Our Moon" and the chapter title means "The Most Beautiful Nights".
> 
> There are some bits of Spanish in this chapter that go a little beyond just small talk, so you can find the translations for them in the end notes.

“Victor, we need popcorn!” Adrian shouted from the living room, so Victor called back, “I know, I’m already working on it!” and pressed the button on the microwave.

It was Friday night, a couple of hours after he’d said goodbye to Mia at the cafe, and even though it was kind of dorky, he was spending the evening at home with his mom and little brother, since Benji was out with his parents at some kind of theater thing in Dallas and Felix was on a date with Lake. It had been a long time since they’d had a movie night together, and although it was only the three of them with Armando gone and Pilar out doing something, Victor was actually really looking forward to it. It just felt so normal, and lately there hadn’t been enough of that in his life.

“Where is Pilar tonight, anyway?” he asked Isabel as he sat down in between her and Adrian on the couch. The second he placed the bowl of popcorn down on the coffee table Adrian lunged for it and scooped up a giant handful.

“Whoah, slow down over there,” Isabel reprimanded. “Popcorn is meant to be chewed, not inhaled.”

“I am chewing it,” Adrian insisted, opening his mouth wide to reveal a bunch of mashed up bits of corn. Isabel and Victor both groaned.

“God give me strength,” Isabel muttered. She looked over at Victor and her lips curled up into a sly smile. “Your sister won’t admit to anything, of course, but I’m pretty sure she’s out on a date right now.”

“Really?” Victor asked, intrigued, as Adrian scrunched up his nose and said, “Gross.”

Isabel nodded. “Well, that’s my assumption, based on the amount of time she spent in the bathroom before leaving tonight… and also the nice looking boy that picked her up earlier…”

“Wait, did you meet him? What did he look like?” Victor asked, eager for details. Pilar was always so nosy about his personal life that he felt no shame doing the same thing to her now the tables were turned. As far as he knew this was the first time Pilar was going out with anyone after her messy break up with Eric back in October. It was nice to know that she might finally be getting over what had happened.

“Ugh, can we just watch the movie already?” Adrian complained.

“I didn’t meet him,” Isabel said, completely ignoring Adrian in favor of gossiping with Victor about Pilar. “She ran out of the house and into his car before I got a chance. But I did get a quick peek at him from the window. He had brown hair and light skin… and, uh, that’s all I got. It was hard to see much from here.”

Victor shook his head. “White guy with brown hair” could be used to describe nearly half of the people in town. “That could be practically anybody. Guess he has to be at least a sophomore though, since he has a car.”

“Who cares about some boy? Let’s start the movie!” Adrian urged them.

“All right, all right,” Isabel said, giving in and pressing play. She nudged Victor conspiratorially. “Maybe we can get a better look at him when she comes home later.”

About halfway through Adrian’s movie, Victor got a text message from Benji.

_Hey there, how’s your evening been? We just got to the intermission but the show’s really good so far_

_I was wondering if you wanted to come see the band practice tomorrow if you’re free?_

Victor stared down at the text guiltily, not sure how to respond. He hadn’t gotten around to telling Benji about his run in with Teddy on Thursday and the detention he would have to serve the following morning. He knew that he should’ve mentioned it to him at school earlier that day, but the only time he’d gotten to see Benji was during lunch with all of their friends, and Victor hadn’t wanted to bring it up in front of everyone.

“I’ll be right back,” he told Isabel and Adrian, and wandered out to the kitchen to give Benji a call.

Benji picked up right away, saying “Hey handsome, what’s up?”

Victor couldn’t help smiling immediately at that greeting, even though he was feeling a little nervous about telling Benji what had happened with Teddy. “Hey, uh, do you have time to talk now?”

“I think I’ve got about ten minutes,” Benji answered.

He opened his mouth, and then found himself chickening out and saying, “So how’s the show?”

“It’s _amazing,_ ” Benji said enthusiastically. “I know I sound like a total cliché saying this, but I actually really love musicals. Dad’s kind of stoically suffering through it, but me and Mum are having a blast tonight. It’s only fair, though, since he drags us out to his football games all the time.”

“Oh, that’s cool,” Victor said, and then since he knew they had limited time and he needed to get it over with, he took a deep breath and admitted, “So, um. I can’t come to your practice tomorrow because I have detention, and uh, I’m going to see my dad after that.”

There was a long pause, and finally Benji said, sounding confused, “Wait, what? You have _detention_?”

“Yeah.”

“How the hell did that happen?”

“Uh… well, on Thursday I ran into Teddy Anderson in the hallway, and he said something really, _really_ shitty to Mia, and I – I kind of lost my temper and shoved him into a locker.” Victor cringed as he said it. In the moment when it had happened he’d just been so incredibly angry that he hadn’t even thought about what he was doing, he’d just acted, but now whenever he remembered it he couldn’t quite believe he’d reacted like that. Benji still hadn’t said anything, so Victor continued cautiously, “He, uh, shoved me back, and then we ended up getting sent to Principal Meyers’ office. We both have detention this Saturday and the next one.”

“Victor… what did he even say to you?”

“He told Mia that the reason I’m gay is because she wasn’t, like, good enough for me,” Victor said. Just thinking about it, about the hurt on Mia’s face, had his temper flaring up again. “Except the way that he said it was a lot worse than that.”

Benji sighed. “That’s really fucked up. I get how frustrating that must have been, but… Victor, you really have to get your anger under control. You tried to go after Teddy last Saturday, too, and then in the cafeteria the other day you nearly chased that guy down just for taking a picture of us. You can’t get into a fight with every homophobe that does something shitty, no matter how pissed off you are.”

Victor hung his head, feeling even worse about it than he already had. “Yeah, I know. I’m going to try talking to Jake about it on Wednesday.”

“That’s a good idea. Look, I have to go now, the show’s going to start again in a minute.”

“Okay. Sorry I can’t come to the practice tomorrow.”

“It’s fine, there’ll be plenty of other ones. You can make it up to me by not getting into any more fights with Teddy, okay?”

“Yeah,” Victor agreed, but just then he remembered what Teddy had said on his way out of the principal’s office on Thursday. _“This isn’t over, Salazar.”_ Victor would just have to try his best to avoid him and hope that somehow Teddy would lose interest in him eventually.

“Hey,” Benji said, sounding a little gentler now, “thanks for telling me what happened. And good luck with your dad. If you need to talk or anything, I’ll be around. I’m not working tomorrow night actually, so if you feel up to doing something in the evening let me know.”

“Yeah, that’d be cool,” Victor said, relief washing over him that Benji didn’t seem to be upset with him after all. “I’ll text you about it tomorrow.”

Victor went back out to the living room to take his seat on the couch, and Isabel glanced over at him out of the corner of her eye.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Yep,” he said, more cheerfully than he felt. “Just saying hi to Benji.”

She looked unconvinced, but didn’t say anything else, and they settled in to finish the movie. By the time it ended and Adrian had been tucked into bed, Pilar still hadn’t gotten home yet, so they began looking for something to watch next.

Isabel was scrolling through some romantic comedies, her usual go to, and stopped on a Christmas film. There was something weirdly too-casual about her voice when she said, “How about this one?”

Victor had only been half paying attention, his mind still on the conversation with Benji earlier and everything that was going to happen on Saturday, but the strange tone of Isabel’s voice had him focusing in on the movie she’d selected. As soon as he got a closer look at the image on the screen he felt his mouth drop open a little in shock.

“Oh, that’s, uh…”

“I read an article about it the other day,” Isabel said, the words light, like it was no big deal, even though her smile seemed a little stiff. “Apparently it’s the first ever Lifetime movie about a gay couple.”

For some reason Victor’s heart was pounding. He had no idea why the thought of watching this film with his mom was making him so nervous, but apparently it was. “You, uh… you want to watch a gay movie?”

“Yes,” Isabel said firmly, despite her obvious discomfort. “Why shouldn’t we? I mean, how many romantic movies have we watched together over the years, and every single one of them has been about a straight couple? That doesn’t really seem fair.”

Victor’s mind was blown. Not knowing how to express just how touched he was by this gesture, he simply said, “Okay, let’s give it a try.”

Victor hadn’t really seen many movies or TV shows with queer main characters, since he’d always been paranoid in the past about getting caught. Someone might come in the room, or they might accidentally click on his account on Netflix or Hulu or whatever and see what was in his history, and he hadn’t wanted to take the risk. Occasionally he’d stream or download something from a less than Kosher website, especially in the past couple of months since he’d come out to himself and had no longer been trapped in a state of denial and confusion about everything. But it had still felt like this clandestine activity, something he had to do behind closed doors, and now to be sitting in the middle of the living room next to his mom watching a film about a couple of men going on dates and falling in love… well, it was difficult to believe that it was actually happening.

He couldn’t stop himself from sneaking little peeks at his mom’s face throughout the movie, especially during the romantic moments, to gauge how she was feeling about it. But despite some signs of being a little uncomfortable at times, Isabel looked like she was genuinely enjoying the story. It was cheesy, and melodramatic, and after about twenty minutes they both fell into their usual habit of mocking the more ridiculous parts, and Victor just felt so relieved and grateful that they were finally able to do something like this together.

They were so engrossed in the film that they didn’t even hear the sound of Pilar getting home until she’d already come in the door, which unfortunately meant that they’d missed their chance to catch a glimpse of her saying goodbye to the mystery date. Isabel and Victor exchanged a disappointed look over this before pausing the movie and turning to greet her.

“So, how was your evening?” Isabel asked, like she wasn’t completely invested in the answer.

Pilar’s stormy face said everything. “A complete and utter waste of time and make up. What are you guys watching? Ugh, it’s not another one of your rom coms, is it?”

She walked around the couch and flopped down into the armchair, kicking off her shoes and dropping her purse haphazardly onto the floor.

“Why was it a waste of time? Who’d you go out with anyway?” Victor asked.

Pilar narrowed her eyes. “No one. Just some complete loser that I am more than ready to forget about.” Before they could ask any more questions, she said, “Just play this dumb movie already so I can pretend that tonight never happened.”

“Okay…” Isabel said slowly, looking a little taken aback by Pilar’s bad mood. She started the movie again.

A couple of minutes later, Pilar frowned and said, “Wait a minute. Are you guys actually watching a _gay_ rom com?”

“Yeah, so?” Isabel said pointedly. “What’s wrong with that?”

Pilar shook her head quickly, but she looked like she was impressed. “Nothing. That’s cool.”

They all sat there and watched the ending together, which naturally involved love confessions and romantic kisses in the snow and a lot of over the top cheesiness, but the fact that Victor could do this now was incredible, no matter how awkward it was at first, and it left him feeling a little bit like he was living in some feel-good Lifetime movie himself, where maybe everything could eventually lead to a happy ending.

All thoughts of fuzzy family-bonding moments and happy endings flew out of Victor’s head the minute he woke up the next day and had to face the prospect of his upcoming, first ever detention. It was going to last four hours, starting at eight a. m. The early hour was a punishment in itself even for someone like Victor who was generally a morning person.

He was one of the first people to arrive in the Chemistry classroom, which was where they were meant to be serving their detention with Ms. Thomas. Over the next five minutes several other people began to trickle in, most of them students that Victor didn’t really know, and then to his surprise Andrew walked through the door and took the seat near Victor’s. Teddy arrived a few minutes later, just barely on time, and sat as far away from them as he could get.

Andrew’s brows were raised as he turned to look at Victor. “How exactly did you of all people end up with detention?”

Before Victor could reply to that, Ms. Thomas stomped into the room and snapped, “Shut it.”

Hardly anyone had been talking, but no one was anymore.

“I am not in the mood for any trouble today. My boyfriend, Omar, just dumped me last night and waking up at six to spend my morning with all of you when I could be at home with a tub of ice cream re-watching _The Bachelor_ is a special kind of torture today.”

Andrew put on a sympathetic expression that did not strike Victor as especially genuine and said, “Well, he’s making a huge mistake, Ms. Thomas. You’re a catch.”

This softened her up a bit, surprisingly, and she gave Andrew a tiny smile. “Thank you, Mr. Spencer. That’s incredibly inappropriate coming from a sixteen year old, but I appreciate the sentiment.”

A couple of guys in the corner snickered at this exchange, which unfortunately brought Ms. Thomas’ bad mood back in full force. “Now, detentionees, your task today is to get out there and scrub every last bit of graffiti and old gum off the school walls until this place is sparkling. I’m going to put you in pairs and assign a section of the school to each team, and you’ll stay here until your area meets my satisfaction.”

A guy near the front of the room asked, “Does that mean we can leave before twelve if we finish early?”

“Sure, I don’t care. Just as long as you get the job done. But we can be here all day if you don’t,” Ms. Thomas threatened. She paired them off, and Victor was relieved to end up with Andrew rather than Teddy or a complete stranger. Then she gestured toward the cleaning supplies lined up on one of the desks. “Well, get out there and get scrubbing. I’ll be in here if you need me, waiting to see whose heart Matt James decides to break this week.”

Victor and Andrew grabbed the stuff they needed and headed out into the hallway. As soon as they were out of Ms. Thomas’ line of sight, Teddy barged past, intentionally knocking into Victor and spilling his bucket of water all over him. Victor’s immediate instinct was to chase after him, but he forced himself to remember the promises he’d made to do better at controlling his temper, and just stood there for a moment breathing through his nose until he was calm enough to walk away.

“You okay?” Andrew asked, following Victor into the bathroom and waiting while he refilled his bucket.

His jeans and shoes were soaked through and he was angry enough that he still wanted to chase Teddy down and shout at him, but Victor told himself that it was just water and it didn’t really matter. It wasn’t worth getting into even more trouble over it.

“Fine,” he muttered. As they left the bathroom and headed toward the area near the cafeteria which had been assigned to them, he asked, “What the hell is his problem, anyway?”

“Teddy has four older brothers, and his dad’s the real macho type. I think in his family the only way to prove that you’re worth anything is by showing how much tougher you are than everyone else, and Teddy has to work the hardest of all, since he’s the youngest.”

Victor looked at him in surprise, so Andrew explained, “We used to be friends, up until last year. I guess I just started to get sick of the way I found myself acting whenever we were together. Like I had to prove something to everyone, too. I don’t want to be that guy anymore.”

They worked quietly for the next hour or so. There was way more graffiti around the school than he’d ever bothered to notice before, and almost all of it was some nasty, hurtful thing that someone had written to put another person down. To make themselves feel bigger.

At one point, Victor had to stop and lean back against the wall to stretch his arm, muscles cramping from all the elbow grease it took to get Sharpie off of plaster. It was after nine already but his jeans were still uncomfortably damp and his shoes squelched every time he took a step. The fact that he’d just had to scrub yet another homophobic slur off of a locker was really not improving his mood at all.

“I think that was the fifth “Lone Stone” I’ve done so far,” Andrew muttered as he stopped to stretch his arms as well.

“I’ve hit seven by now,” Victor said, irritated by how blasé Andrew seemed to be about it. “You do get that each one of them is pretty much your fault, right?”

“What? How is it my fault? I didn’t write any of those.”

“No, but you’re the one that came up with that stupid name in the first place, and ever since you did, people stopped seeing Felix as a real person. He just became a joke to everyone,” Victor pointed out. Andrew may have been a pretty decent person recently, but Victor’s best friend had still been teased for years because of a single comment Andrew had made. He caught the look on Andrew’s face and felt a little guilty about snapping at him after all that Andrew had done for him last week.

“Sorry,” Victor said. “Look, you can be a really nice guy. It’s just that you can also be careless sometimes, too, with the kinds of jokes you make about other people. You were right before – most people are followers, but _you’re_ not. Everyone else always copies you, so for better or worse I guess what you say matters more than the rest of us.”

They didn’t talk much after that, but Andrew looked like he was lost in thought for the rest of the morning, and he worked his way through one graffiti insult after another at a pace that had them finishing long before anyone else did. They got to leave forty-five minutes early as a result, and Victor would have been grateful if he wasn’t so stressed out about what was going to happen when he got home.

Armando’s car was in the driveway by the time Victor arrived, but when Victor stepped warily into the house, he was nowhere to be seen. Instead, there was just Isabel, seated at the dining room table with her laptop and her reading glasses perched on her nose.

“Where is everyone?” Victor asked after he’d changed into some dry jeans.

“Adrian insisted on going riding, so they’re out in the back field. They left almost an hour ago so they should be back pretty soon.” She got up to refill her coffee cup. “You want some?”

“Sure,” Victor said, taking a seat at the table.

She fixed it the way he liked it with just a little milk and set it down in front of him when she returned to her own chair. Then she looked at him sternly over her glasses and asked, “Why are you here so soon? I thought your detention didn’t finish until twelve.”

“Ms. Thomas let us go early after we finished the work she assigned us,” Victor explained. His arms were still tired enough from all the scrubbing that his hand shook a bit when he lifted the cup to his mouth.

Isabel’s expression grew hesitant as she said, “Victor, I’m really proud of you for agreeing to see him today. I know it’s not easy, but I’ve been talking with him this past week and I think that he’s ready to listen now. So please just try to be patient with him, okay?”

Victor nodded, but there was an anxious feeling growing inside his chest that had him wiping his palms against his legs and dreading the moment when he’d have to see his father again. They’d both been so bad at being patient with each other in the last few months that he didn’t have a lot of confidence in their ability to do it now, especially not with emotions running as high as they had been ever since Victor had come out.

He hung out there at the table sipping his coffee and tried to distract himself by texting with Benji while he waited for the others to get back to the house.

_You still up for doing something tonight?_

_Sure, what did you have in mind?_

Victor stared at that text for a few minutes, his fingers hovering over the screen, as he realized that he honestly didn’t have any interesting ideas. It suddenly occurred to him that despite the fact that he and Benji had been together for awhile already, they still technically hadn’t gone on any official dates. They mostly just hung out together after work or at Benji’s house, and the closest they’d gotten to a real date had been during their weekend in Texarkana, but none of that had been planned.

He looked uncertainly toward his mom. “Um. What do you think would be a fun thing to do in Brandon?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, uh. Like something nice to do on a Saturday night.”

“Like a date?” she asked, laughing at him a little when he nodded shyly. “You already took Mia out on a bunch of dates in Brandon last fall. Why are you asking now? Did you run out of ideas?”

“No, it’s just – well, I haven’t really planned a date for me and Benji before,” he said reluctantly, and flushed when her brows went up in surprise.

“You told me you’ve been seeing him for two months.”

“Yeah. I have.”

“How have you not taken him on a date before?”

“Well, because we had to keep everything a secret for most of that time,” he explained, and the amusement in her eyes was quickly replaced by pity. “So I guess that tonight will be the first real date that we’ve been on and I’m not sure what would be a nice thing to do.”

“Okay. Um… _Bueno_ , there are a lot of good restaurants around the Commons that you could go to. Your dad took me to that Japanese place on the corner one time, and it had a really fun atmosphere. There’s also some of those microbrewery type places over by the college that sometimes have live music. Or you could go out to the movies.” She tapped a finger against the rim of her cup as she thought. “I don’t know, what kinds of things does he like to do?”

“He likes music, and art, and dancing…” Victor listed off. “His family seems to eat a lot of international food.”

“Well, what about the sushi place then?”

Taking Benji out to sushi reminded him too much of his first date with Mia, so Victor decided against that. He and Isabel ended up scrolling through international restaurant suggestions on her laptop for the next five minutes, and were in the middle of discussing whether or not an Indian place was a good idea when the back door slid open.

“Victor, guess what!” Adrian shouted as he stepped inside and began to pull off his muddy boots. Victor didn’t have a chance to ask before Adrian continued excitedly, “We saw a coyote in the back field!”

“It didn’t spook the horses, did it?” Isabel asked, looking him over in concern.

“Elsa got scared, but it was okay, _Papi_ took care of it,” Adrian told them.

Pilar stepped in next, adding her boots to the pile by the door. “Actually, I had it in under control, thanks,” she corrected him, and shot Isabel an exasperated look. “No need to freak out.”

“No one is ‘freaking out’, Pilar. I’m just checking that everyone’s fine. That kind of thing can be dangerous.”

“Pilar did a great job of keeping Elsa calm,” Armando said, smiling proudly at Pilar. That smile wavered a little when he turned to greet Victor. “Uh, hey, _flaco_. How are you?”

“I’m fine.” Victor wasn’t trying to be short with him, but he could tell the words had come out that way regardless when Armando winced slightly.

Armando leaned over to take a closer look at the laptop and said, “Oh, were you guys thinking of going out to eat tonight?”

“Ooh, can we?” Adrian asked, grabbing hold of Armando’s arm and looking up at him pleadingly.

“No, actually, I was just helping Victor look up some places,” Isabel answered. She glanced between Victor and Armando, and then said cautiously, “For his date tonight.”

Armando’s face froze. “Oh.”

Everything suddenly felt a thousand times more uncomfortable than it already had, and Victor couldn’t help wishing that Isabel hadn’t mentioned his date. But at the same time he could see why she had. Armando wasn’t going to learn to accept this part of Victor as something normal unless they all made an effort to treat it like it was.

Pilar peered over Isabel’s shoulder at the screen. “Don’t go to that tandoori place. Eric took me there one time and I’m pretty sure it gave us food poisoning.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks,” Victor said, and then an awkward silence followed, so Victor jumped up from the table. “How about lunch? Did you guys eat yet?”

“I want mac and cheese!” Adrian requested.

Victor got to work making food for everyone, which was a welcome distraction from his father’s presence for the twenty minutes or so that it kept him occupied. While he was busy, the rest of them sat at the table and talked about Armando’s new job and then as they ate together they discussed safe topics, like what everyone had been doing in school that week and how the animals were faring.

“So, uh, how was your game last weekend?” Armando asked him, clearly just trying to make polite conversation. Pilar and Isabel exchanged a glance, and Victor found himself staring down at his plate.

“It was canceled.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” Armando said, looking around at all of them with a confused frown on his face. “What happened?”

“Two of the boys on Victor’s team got in trouble for a dumb prank,” Isabel said, jumping in when Victor must have looked reluctant to explain the details.

This only seemed to make Armando even more perplexed. “They canceled the game over a _prank_?”

Isabel looked like she was about to make up some excuse about it, but Victor realized that there was no point in dancing around the issue. He looked at his father directly and said, “They wrote something stupid and homophobic on my locker, and me and the guy that did it nearly got into a fight. Coach Harris canceled the game so that he could deal with everything.”

“But why would they do something like that? Do the other kids at your school _know_ about you now?”

“Yeah,” Victor said, trying his best to stay calm, “I came out to my friends at school last week, and now pretty much everyone knows.”

Armando seemed shaken by this information, his mouth hanging slightly open in shock, and his hands frozen over his plate. He suddenly seemed to remember that Adrian was at the table, too, and glanced over at him worriedly.

“ _Mijo_ , maybe you should go play in your room for a few minutes while we discuss this,” he suggested. Adrian was already mostly finished with his mac and cheese anyway, and had mostly been pushing the leftovers around with his fork for the last few minutes.

Adrian pouted. “Why? I want to stay in here with you guys.”

Isabel said, in a slow, careful manner, “Armando, he knows that Victor’s gay. We already explained it to him.”

This proved to be too much for Armando to deal with. He dropped his silverware with a clatter and brought one hand up to rub across his mouth and beard as he clearly struggled to remain calm. “I’m sorry,” he said, standing up in a rush, his chair scraping loudly across the floor. He headed for the back door. “I just need a minute.”

The door slid shut behind him and they all watched him walk swiftly away from the house toward the pasture. Isabel’s shoulders slumped, and she shot Victor a concerned look.

“Are you all right?”

Victor shook his head tightly. “I’m fine. I’ll just be in my room.”

He spent the next half an hour lying around in bed unable to actually focus on anything, just staring blankly at the tree branches shifting in the wind outside his window. Eventually there was a knock on the door, and although Victor hoped for a second that it would be Isabel telling him Armando had decided to leave again, he already knew by the sound of the knock who was there.

“Is it okay if I come in?” Armando asked, uncharacteristically cautious. Victor nodded, so he pushed the door open the rest of the way and entered, closing it again behind him. He seemed nervous about approaching Victor and leaned back against the wall near the desk instead.

“I’m sorry for getting upset earlier,” Armando said. “I’m trying to get better at controlling my anger, but it can still be hard for me sometimes.”

Victor pushed himself upright. “Yeah. I’ve been having the same problem lately.”

“I’m sorry about that as well,” Armando said with a self-deprecating smile. “You getting my quick temper, I mean.”

“Are you mad that I told Adrian about me?”

Armando turned his head to the side for a moment, collecting himself before he answered. “Yeah. I guess I am. I’m trying to understand this, Victor, but I don’t really get it, and honestly, it still doesn’t feel right to me. I’m having a hard time believing that you’re really… what you say you are. And now the thought of all these other people knowing about it, your _little brother_ knowing… yeah. It upsets me.”

“Why?” Victor asked, embarrassed when the question came out more desperate than he’d intended. “Why _can’t_ you believe me?”

“I don’t know. I guess I just grew up hearing certain things about gay people, about what they were like, and you’re nothing like that. You’ve always been such a good kid, so responsible and strong, so good with your brother and sister. You love sports, and you’re really talented at basketball – much better at it than I ever was. You’re great with the horses, too. You being… gay just doesn’t make sense.”

Victor let out a tired sigh, trying hard not to take offense at what his father had just said. “ _Papi_ , gay people can be good at sports. Remember Jason Collins? None of that stuff you just mentioned has anything do with me being gay or straight.”

Armando shook his head. “What about Mia? It seemed like you liked her so much. Couldn’t you just give it another try? Or maybe a different girl. You’re still so young, Victor, I don’t understand how you can be sure that you aren’t attracted to girls when you’ve hardly had the chance to even date very many.”

“I don’t need to date a bunch of different girls to know. If I hadn’t been so scared of coming out to myself and you guys, I wouldn’t have even needed to try dating Mia last fall. I’m pretty sure that if things had been different, if I’d grown up believing that there’s nothing wrong with being gay, then I would have figured things out a lot faster and without hurting Mia the way I did.” Armando opened his mouth, looking as though he was about to counter Victor’s argument, but Victor continued quickly before he could. “Look, would you just try and imagine for a second that someone said something like that to you? What if I asked you to just try dating a guy?”

Armando recoiled at the suggestion, his visible disgust making Victor’s heart clench painfully, but he pressed on anyway, saying, “It freaks you out, right? It makes you uncomfortable. You probably feel like you’d never be attracted to a guy no matter who you went out with. Well, that’s the same way I feel about girls.”

“It just – it doesn’t seem natural.”

This whole conversation hurt, and Victor was so ready to be done with it, but he thought about seeing Mia the previous day and how she had encouraged him not to give up on Armando. He took a deep breath and forced himself to continue the discussion.

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe the only reason it seems unnatural to you is because _you’re_ not gay?” Victor pointed out. “What feels natural to you and what feels natural to me is different.”

Armando’s jaw clenched, his frustration obvious, but he seemed to be trying to give what Victor said some consideration. He was silent for awhile, and Victor found himself holding his breath, waiting to hear what awful thing he’d say next, his whole body tense with anticipation. Eventually Armando just let out a heavy sigh and seemed to sink back against the wall, like all of his anger had transformed at once into exhaustion.

“Your mother told me about the, uh, the paper she found in your room. The list of resources and, um, the phone number for the youth shelter.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, and Victor was shocked to realize that Armando’s eyes had suddenly filled up with tears. “All I ever wanted was to do right by you guys. To be a good dad. To – to be a _better_ dad than my own father was. But I screwed it all up, didn’t I?”

Victor’s own eyes were burning, and his heart ached so badly it felt like it was literally splitting in half. He didn’t know what to say.

“I am so sorry,” Armando said softly. “I don’t know how to accept what you told us. I don’t know if I can ever really be all right with it. But – uh, but I’m going to try, okay? Because I love you. I love you so much and I’m sorry for ever scaring you, for making you think you weren’t safe here, or that you didn’t belong with us. I’m sorry for not being the kind of father I wanted to be.”

Victor felt like he couldn’t move, could barely even breathe, like all he could do was sit there and let the tears roll down his face to match the ones on his father’s cheeks. It didn’t seem real, not until Armando suddenly moved forward and reached out to him, and then Victor pushed himself off the bed and let his father pull him into a hug. It was only then, with Armando’s arms wrapped tightly around him, that he began to believe it.

Armando said fiercely, a little brokenly, “I love you, _mijo_ ,” and Victor replied with a sense of relief so great it was immeasurable, “I love you, too.”

After the conversation in Victor’s room, Armando stayed for a few more hours. They all ended up playing board games at the dining room table, aside from Isabel who seemed to be maintaining a careful distance between herself and Armando during his visit. She sat on the couch with her laptop, close enough to keep an eye on all of them without actually participating in the activities.

Victor excused himself for a bit in between one game and another, so he could choose a place for his date later that evening and finally reply to Benji’s text. He didn’t have a ton of time to research different options, so in the end he gave up on finding something new and decided he would give something old and familiar a try.

_Hey, sorry it took me forever to respond. My dad’s here right now so I was a little distracted_

_Can I pick you up at 6 tonight? I was thinking we could get dinner together_

Benji’s reply came a few minutes later, after Victor had returned to the table to find the others in the middle of setting up Pictionary.

 _It’s a date_ 😉

_Hope everything is going well over there with your dad_

The word “date” followed by the little winking emoji had Victor’s heart skipping a beat, leaving him staring at the text for awhile as he began to get excited about going out later.

“I wanna be on _Papi’s_ team!” Adrian said.

“Victor, stop flirting with Benji and get your head in the game,” Pilar snapped, mostly just pretending to be annoyed with him. She sighed dramatically. “We are _so_ going to lose.”

Victor glanced nervously at his father, but Armando stoically ignored the mention of Benji and handed out paper and pencils to everyone. About halfway through the game Victor replied to Benji’s message, sending along a photo of one of his drawings with the text.

_Things are going about as well as they can_

_Wish you were here, then maybe I’d actually have a chance at winning Pictionary for the first time in my life…_

_What am I even looking at?? Is that supposed to be some kind of troll?_

Victor winced and Pilar cackled loudly when she read the message over his shoulder like the Nosy Nancy that she was.

“A _troll_ ,” she giggled, wiping away a tear from her eye.

 _It was supposed to be you actually_ 😖😥

_I got the prompt “handsome guy” because_ _of course that would happen when my dad’s here…_

_It was_ _kinda_ _worth it for the look on_ _his_ _face though lol_

_I honestly don’t know whether to feel flattered or insulted right now_ 😂

Victor and Pilar did end up losing, but that was pretty much a given from the start considering that Victor’s artistic talents were possibly even worse than his seven year old brother’s. Even so, the fact that he’d just been able to spend the last several hours in his dad’s company without either of them blowing up at each other was some kind of miracle, and Victor was willing to lose any number of games in exchange for a relatively calm afternoon with his family.

It was a little bit after six by the time Victor pulled up outside of Benji’s house because Pilar and Isabel had hassled him about his outfit on his way out the door. Pilar had taken one look at the jeans and shirt he’d chosen and shook her head at him, muttering, “How are you even gay when you have such bad taste in clothes?” to which Victor had told her to stop stereotyping him, and then stomped away to his room to find something else to wear. The darker pants and more form-fitting shirt that he finally settled on met their approval at least, but now he was almost ten minutes late.

Benji was sitting on the porch with Amelia when he showed up, so Victor got out of the truck in order to go say hi to her as well.

It was a nice evening, the orange sky overhead dotted with a few vibrant clouds but not overcast the way it had been the day before. It was still a little cool out, and Amelia looked cozy where she was tucked up on the hanging bench seat with a blanket and a cup of tea cradled in her hands.

“Hi, Victor,” she greeted him. “How are you? Do I get to know where you’re taking Benji out tonight?”

“I’m good, thanks. Uh, I thought it’d be fun if it was a surprise…”

“You’re right, don’t let me spoil it,” she said with a smile.

Benji came over to give Victor a kiss hello, which had Victor freezing up suddenly as his eyes darted nervously over to Amelia.

“Oh, sorry,” Benji rushed to say as he noticed Victor’s discomfort.

“Um, no, it’s okay,” Victor reassured him. Everyone knew that they were a couple now, so Victor needed to start learning how to relax about stuff like this. Just to prove to Benji that he wasn’t freaked out, he took Benji’s hand in his.

“Sorry I’m late,” Victor apologized as they got into the car a minute later. He started it up and began to head out of the neighborhood. “So, do you have a curfew or anything?”

Benji grinned. “Planning to keep me out late, are you?”

“Uh, well, it’s just that the place I was thinking of going to is a little ways outside of Brandon,” Victor stammered, already flustered by Benji’s flirting.

“Relax, it’s fine. I don’t have a curfew,” Benji said, eyes shining with amusement. “Feel free to keep me out as late as you want.”

The drive over to the other town took them along a lot of quiet country roads, and with the sun setting behind them, even the mostly flat, unexciting landscape around Brandon took on an attractive glow. The light caught on Benji’s hair, too, bringing out the gold in it, and it was a real struggle at times for Victor to remember to keep his eyes on the road.

Eventually they arrived at their destination, Victor pulling up outside a modest brick building in a town that was even smaller and more rural than Brandon was. Hanging in the window was a familiar wooden sign, the same one that had been hanging there for years, with a little flag painted in the corner and the phrase “ _La_ _Boricua_ ” written in bold black words across the middle.

Benji looked up at the restaurant with a pleasantly surprised smile. “A Puerto Rican place?”

“I hope that’s okay with you,” Victor said. “It’s nothing fancy, but it’s one of the best Puerto Rican restaurants in the DFW area, and I’ve been coming here with my family pretty much my whole life. I know you like to try new kinds of food, so I thought you might find this interesting…”

“It sounds perfect,” Benji said, reaching out to brush his thumb across the back of Victor’s hand.

Inside the restaurant the walls were mostly exposed brick, except for one which had a huge mural painted on it depicting a field with a Flamboyán tree spreading its fiery, blossom covered branches over an old house. There was a counter with a small bar, and in one corner a few people were setting up to perform live music like they always did on Saturday nights. Most of the tables were already full, and there was a lively buzz of Spanglish conversation filling the room.

“ _Victor!_ _Ha pasado tanto tiempo_!” a woman’s voice called out, and Victor turned to see Claudia walking up to them, a broad smile on her face and her hands already reaching out to settle on his shoulders as she gave him a kiss on the cheek. “ _Dónde está_ _n_ _tu_ _s_ _p_ _adre_ _s_ _?_ ”

Victor had assumed that if he came here he’d be asked about his family and who he was there with, so although he was a little nervous about it he readily summoned up his courage and told her, “ _Sólo estoy aquí con mi novio, Benji._ ”

Claudia’s eyes went wide as they darted over to Benji in surprise.

“ _Hola, buenas tardes_ ,” Benji said. He’d clearly understood what Victor had told her because he was looking a little wide-eyed as well, glancing over at Victor with a kind of wonder.

For a moment Victor was worried that Claudia might be weird about it, and that he’d just ruined their first official date by taking Benji somewhere that wouldn’t be accepting of them, but then Claudia’s warm smile returned to her face. She leaned in to give him a kiss as well, and said, “ _Mucho gusto, Benji._ ”

They were seated at a small table near the back of the room, one of the only ones still available. They placed their order with Claudia right away, Benji letting Victor pick stuff out for them, and then a few minutes later Claudia’s husband, Martín, showed up with their drinks, a couple of cans of Coco Rico.

“Victor, good to see you,” Martín said, shaking first Victor’s and then Benji’s hand. “This must be the new _novio_ I just heard about. Very nice to meet you. We’ll get you some dessert on the house later since it’s your first time here.”

“ _Gracias, Martín_ ,” Victor said, so relieved and touched by how welcoming they were being, how readily they’d accepted his coming out to them.

Martín wandered away to another table, and Benji took a sip of his coconut flavored soda, nodding appreciatively. “It seems like the people here know you really well.”

“The owners, Claudia and Martín, are friends of our family. Claudia and my mom actually went to high school together,” Victor explained. “They’re kind of like an honorary aunt and uncle to me.”

“I’m really glad I can meet them,” Benji said, that look of wonder lingering in his eyes. “You’re pretty amazing, you know that? It was really cool of you to tell them about us.”

Victor wasn’t quite sure what to say to that, but before he could figure it out there was the sound of someone strumming a guitar, and then a woman began to sing in Spanish as the band started up. The song was something old-fashioned and romantic, the kind of music that his Abuela Maria liked to listen to. It reminded him of going to visit her at her house in San Juan, of long afternoons sitting around in the air conditioning listening to her stories.

“So how did things go with your dad today?” Benji asked.

“Better than I expected,” Victor told him, a hopeful feeling opening up inside of him. “Some of the stuff he said was hard to listen to, but… I think he really wants to try to make things better now.”

Their food arrived a couple of songs later, one plate of _mofongo_ with shrimp and another of _pernil asado_ served with sides of _arroz con gandules_ and _tostones_. They ended up placing both dishes in the middle of the table and sharing them, so that Benji would get a chance to try more of it, and it was fun to see how much he enjoyed everything.

“We really have to come back here sometime,” Benji said as he scooped up another forkful of _mofongo_. “This is so good.”

“ _Necesitan algo_ _más_ _?”_ Claudia asked them, pausing on her way by their table.

“ _No, estamos bien, gracias,”_ Victor said.

Benji smiled and told her, slow and careful not to make a mistake, “ _La comida_ _está muy_ _rica._ ”

Claudia gave Benji’s shoulder an affectionate squeeze. Before hurrying off to the kitchen, she grinned at Victor and said, “ _N_ _o lo dejes escapar, él_ _es un tesoro._ ”

Victor ducked his head in pleased embarrassment, and only got more flustered when Benji asked, “What did she say just now?”

“Um, nothing much,” he mumbled, and then quickly asked, “So, how was your band practice today?”

Benji clearly wanted to pursue the other topic further, but in the end he just shot Victor a knowing look and told him about a minor argument that had broken out that afternoon between Carl the bassist and Hailey the drummer.

“I really am bummed that I still haven’t gotten to see you guys practice yet,” Victor complained after Benji finished his story. “It seems like there’s always something else getting in the way – basketball, or work, or babysitting Adrian…”

“Or detention,” Benji said dryly. “But don’t worry about it, we’ll make it happen soon. I’m really looking forward to finally introducing everybody in the band to my boyfriend.”

For some reason, sitting there at the table across from Benji on their first official date and hearing him refer to Victor that way, had him suddenly overwhelmed by a kind of amazed disbelief that any of this was actually happening. He could feel a warm flush spreading across his cheekbones and all the way to the tips of his ears, and he took a long sip of his soda in an attempt to hide it.

“What’s going on right now?” Benji asked, eyes narrowed a little in confusion. “Why did you get all embarrassed when I said that?”

“It’s just…” Victor had no idea how to explain what was going on inside of his head without sounding really stupid. He set the can of soda down and made himself look up at Benji. Except looking at him didn’t really help; if anything it only made things worse because Benji with his perfect hair and gorgeous brown eyes, and his soft lips and strong body, with his smooth skin glowing in the dim lighting of the restaurant, looked like everything Victor had ever wanted and he honestly could not believe that he somehow got to have him.

“Victor?” Benji prompted him, beginning to look a little worried now.

“Sorry,” Victor said, feeling like a bit of an idiot. “I just, uh, can’t really believe that this is my life. You know? Like, I can actually be myself now, with my family, and my friends, and at school. And these people I’ve known all my life can see us here together on a date and they’re totally fine with it. But… mostly I just feel insanely lucky that I get to be with you.”

Benji stared at him for a long, heated moment and then he did that thing he did sometimes, that thing that drove Victor crazy, in which he dragged his teeth over his bottom lip, just a flash of canine visible. Victor felt his mouth go dry.

“As soon as we finish the dessert that they promised us,” Benji said, speaking slow and deliberate, “we are finding somewhere quiet to park the truck and then I am going to kiss you for a _very_ long time.”

“Oh. Okay.” Victor’s blush somehow grew even more intense. “That, uh, sounds great.”

That dessert seriously could not come fast enough.

In the truck later on the road back to Brandon, Victor licked his lips and tried to ask as casually as he could, “Were you, um, serious about stopping somewhere quiet?”

Benji looked over at him with eyes that were bright despite the darkness inside the car. “I was one hundred and ten percent serious about that.”

It was only a quarter past eight o’clock, which meant that they had plenty of time before Victor, who did have a curfew, had to be back home. So Victor ended up driving to the reservoir, since it had been consistently quiet every other time he’d been there, and sure enough the small, dusty parking lot was empty when he pulled up. It wasn’t a particularly cold night, and he had a blanket tucked behind the seat that Isabel had insisted on recently in case of emergencies, so he grabbed it and hopped out of the cab. Benji followed him, raising his brows a little when Victor opened up the back of the truck and spread the blanket out across the bed.

“Is this okay?” he asked, feeling a little self-conscious about it.

Benji just climbed up and sat on the edge, his legs hanging down, and reached out to grab Victor by his belt loops. Victor stumbled forward into Benji’s space, his breath hitching at the sudden closeness, and then Benji was kissing him just like he’d promised he would, long, slow, wonderfully lingering kisses that Victor could not get enough of.

It had been two weeks since their trip to Texarkana and during that time there hadn’t been another opportunity to go beyond making out, not with all of the drama in Victor’s life surrounding coming out and both of them having busy schedules that were sometimes difficult to sync up. He’d been pretty distracted by said drama, but not so distracted that he hadn’t spent _a lot_ of time thinking about that night in the motel and wondering when they’d get the chance to do something like that again.

So when Benji broke away from him in order to scoot back farther onto the truck bed, tugging insistently on Victor’s arm, Victor wasted no time following after him. Making out was even better when they were horizontal, especially when Benji pushed Victor down on his back and settled on top of him, his body warm and heavy in a way that felt unbelievably good. It was too cold to shed any clothing, which had him briefly wondering if maybe trying to make this work inside the car would’ve been better, but there was something about seeing Benji’s face framed by the wide expanse of the black, star-spotted sky that Victor wouldn’t have traded for anything.

It turned out there was a lot that they could do even without completely removing their clothes, and Victor was more than happy to let Benji guide him at first. He didn’t really need a lot of instruction, though, not when being close to Benji like this felt so natural and easy. And there was so much to be learned from the little things, too, the things that Benji probably wasn’t even entirely aware he was doing. Like the tiny changes in the cadence of his breathing whenever Victor discovered new ways to touch him, or the impatient tightening of his fingers around Victor’s arm when something wasn’t quite enough, or the slight arching of his back when it was just right. There was so much to learn and Victor was so ready now to learn all of it.

With Victor’s midnight curfew, they had a few hours to lie there wrapped up in the blanket and each other, and every minute of it was a moment that Victor wanted to live in as fully as he could.

“It’s crazy how many stars you can see out here,” Benji said. He was resting his head against one of his arms, the other one curled around Victor’s shoulders under the blanket. Victor could only see as much of the night sky as one of his eyes would allow, since he was draped across Benji’s chest at the moment with his face tucked in against the soft fabric and solid muscle under his cheek. He was way too content where he was to consider moving; he’d seen these stars all his life anyway.

“Better than back in Atlanta, huh?”

Benji craned his neck a little, in order to catch Victor’s mouth with his own. By the time Benji pulled away to speak again Victor had pretty much forgotten what they’d been talking about.

“I never would’ve expected it, but it turns out a lot of stuff is better down here in Texas.”

“So cheesy,” Victor teased, poking Benji lightly in the ribs.

“Says the guy that got all mushy on me at dinner earlier.”

Victor was grateful for the darkness that hid his embarrassed flush just then. He tightened his arm around Benji’s waist, as if there was any way that they could be closer to each other than they already were, and said a little shyly, “I just never really thought that I could have all of this.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s just that… I spent such a long time telling myself that it was wrong to want the things that I did, you know? I was so sure that being gay was going to be the end of the world for me. That it would ruin everything. But instead it’s…”

He tried to figure out how to put it all into words. It was a little hard to concentrate with the warm length of Benji’s body stretched out underneath his, and Benji’s hand wandering down his side in the direction of his hip really wasn’t helping. But he needed to say this, needed Benji to understand how much all of this meant to him.

“I tried so hard to change this part of myself just so that I could be normal, until it became impossible to deny it any longer. And it’s not like everything got a lot easier after I stopped fighting it, because it didn’t really, not with all the crap we’ve been dealing with at school, and everything that happened after I came out to my parents. But even though it hasn’t been easy, I think that I’m really okay with who I am now. More than okay, even. Like, if someone offered me some magic pill tomorrow that would turn me straight, I wouldn’t want it, because I think that being like this has actually made my life better in a lot of ways. It’s brought me closer to my mom and my sister than I have been in a really long time, and it’s given me new friends – a new community – that I never would have had otherwise. And, uh – and it’s given me _you_. That’s the best part of all of it… just getting to be with you.”

He pushed himself up onto his elbow, leaning over Benji. It was dark out there in the middle of nowhere, miles away from town and the nearest house, making it a little hard to see him clearly, but it didn’t matter because Victor had already memorized all the curves and angles of his face.

“I wouldn’t want to be anyone other than who I am now, and I wouldn’t want to fall in love with anyone else but you.”

Benji tried to play it cool but his voice was a little unsteady as he let out a small, shaky laugh and said, “I really, _really_ love you, you gigantic sap.”

Victor opened his mouth to return the sentiment but he didn’t get the chance, because Benji curled a hand around the back of his neck and dragged him down into a kiss before he could say anything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The name of the restaurant "La Boricua" means "The Puerto Rican" or "a Puerto Rican woman".
> 
> The important parts of Victor's conversation with Claudia:  
> "Ha pasado tanto tiempo! Dónde están tus padres?" - It's been awhile! Where are your parents?  
> "Sólo estoy aquí con mi novio, Benji." - I'm just here with my boyfriend, Benji.  
> "Mucho gusto, Benji." - Nice to meet you, Benji.  
> "La comida está muy rica." - The food is really good.  
> "No lo dejes escapar, él es un tesoro." - Don't let him get away, he's a keeper. (Literally "he's a treasure")
> 
> Oh, and the movie Victor watches with Isabel is "The Christmas Set Up". It's 100% a cheesy Lifetime movie, but it was pretty cute and it stars a real life married couple as the lead characters.


	38. Ain’t Gotta Hide This Heart of Mine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: mild internalized homophobia, discussion of racism, homophobia, and bullying
> 
> This chapter title comes from a line in the song "Kiss the Boy" by Keiynan Lonsdale (if you're not already aware, he's the actor that plays Bram).

Victor opened the door to the backyard and let out an unmanly yelp at the sudden gust of cold air that blasted its way into the house. He slid the door shut again quickly and went back to his bedroom to find his winter coat. According to his phone, the temperature had dropped all the way down to twenty-four degrees, a low it didn’t often reach in Brandon.

“Are you going out to feed the animals now?” Adrian asked as Victor passed by his bedroom. He hopped up from where he’d been playing on the floor. “I wanna come, too!”

Victor helped his little brother get bundled up in a hat, coat, and gloves before they both pulled on their boots and went outside. The wind was cold enough to sting his cheeks and make his eyes water, so he went about feeding the chickens as fast as possible before rushing Adrian into the welcome shelter of the barn, where Beau and Elsa were waiting impatiently for their breakfast. They gave them some food and water, and Adrian helped brush them down while Victor looked for some extra blankets to make sure they’d be warm enough. On the way back into the house a short while later, Adrian stopped suddenly and stared up at the sky overhead.

“ _Nieve_?” Adrian gasped out in wonder. “ _Victor, está nevando!_ ”

Sure enough, a smattering of tiny, delicate flakes were beginning to fall, dusting everything around them in a fine white powder. Adrian ran around delightedly, sticking his tongue out in an attempt to taste the snow, and although Victor was freezing out there, he couldn’t help laughing at the pure joy on his brother’s face.

When they eventually made their way inside, the sudden warmth of the house had Victor’s skin burning and Adrian’s cheeks turning pink.

“ _Mami_ , _mami_ , it’s snowing! Look!”

Isabel glanced out the window and grinned. “ _Guau_ , _qu_ é _lindo!_ ”

She was wearing one of her nice dresses along with the scarf that Victor had given her for Christmas, and she had clearly spent a little more time on her hair and make up than usual. As he helped her set the table for breakfast, he asked, “Are you going out somewhere?”

“I was thinking of going to Tia Pamela’s church today,” Isabel answered, in that ‘trying too hard to be casual’ tone of voice that Victor had been hearing so much of since he’d come out to his parents nearly a month ago. “Pame said it’s not as old-fashioned as Sacred Heart. I guess they have some young priest over there that’s a little more open minded.”

Ever since the day that Isabel had asked Father Hurtado to leave their house, she hadn’t been back to church. Victor had been surprised at first, but he hadn’t been brave enough to try talking to her about it, especially not in those early days when things were still a little strained between them. Although she seemed to be doing a lot better now, he still felt reluctant to bring up the topic of religion with her. What if it turned out that she still believed in some of the homophobic stuff that the Church taught? He didn’t want the newfound closeness that was developing between them to be ruined by finding out that she thought he was headed to hell just for being himself.

They all sat down at the dining room table to eat, Pilar wandering out in her pajamas to join them and consuming far more coffee than food as she always did at breakfast.

“Can I make a snowman after church today?” Adrian asked around a big bite of pancakes.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Isabel reprimanded automatically, and then said, “I don’t know if there’ll be enough snow for that, _cari_ _ñ_ _o_ , but you can certainly try. Maybe Tia Pame and Sarah will help you out with it.”

“You’re going to see Tia Pamela today?” Pilar said. “What about Dad?”

Sundays were usually the day that Armando came to the house to visit everyone now, and Victor had also been expecting to see him in the afternoon which was why he hadn’t made other plans. So far they were successfully keeping the peace with each other mainly by sticking to safe topics as much as possible, although Victor was beginning to get frustrated by the way that doing so was making him feel like he was back in the closet again. He’d pushed the boundaries a little the previous weekend by talking about Benji, which had nearly brought an end to their delicate truce, and so Victor hadn’t really been looking forward to seeing his father again later that day.

“He actually just found his own apartment, so he’s busy getting moved in today. He said he was excited about having you guys over to the new place next weekend, though,” Isabel told them, and Victor tried not to let his relief over not having to see his father show. Isabel explained to Pilar about going to the other church, and then asked, in that careful voice like it wasn’t a big deal even though it most definitely was, “Would you two like to join me?”

“No, thanks,” Victor said, as gently as he could. He knew that telling his mother he no longer believed in god was nearly as challenging for her to accept as his coming out to her as gay. In some ways, he thought it might end up being the harder of the two for her to come to terms with.

Isabel nodded, like she’d been expecting that answer, but her smile wavered as she turned to look over at Pilar. The way Isabel seemed to be steeling herself for another rejection made Victor’s heart ache.

To his surprise, and Isabel’s as well, Pilar said, “Sure, I’ll come with you guys. It’ll be nice to see Tia Pamela.”

It was really strange when the three of them left without him half an hour later. Usually he enjoyed the rare occasions when he got to have the house to himself, but this time it just felt lonely. After about twenty minutes of moping around in his room, he got his phone out and gave Benji a call.

“Hey, there,” Benji said, and the sound of his voice had Victor instantly worried.

“What’s wrong?”

Benji sniffed a little and said, “Nothing. I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound fine, B.”

“It’s really nothing, I swear. I was just watching this show, _Secrets of the Zoo_ , and I, uh, might have gotten a little upset when they lost one of the arctic foxes during surgery.”

Victor had to bite his lip to stop himself from laughing since that would probably come off as a bit insensitive. “Wait, so you’re telling me you’ve been spending your Sunday morning watching reality TV and crying?”

“Hey, no need to get all judgy about it. Do I ever say anything about your viewing habits?”

Victor rolled his eyes. “You literally spent, like, twenty minutes making fun of me at work yesterday for being a Sandra Bullock stan.”

“Oh, that was just for the sake of getting you all flustered. I mean, who doesn’t enjoy a Sandra Bullock movie every now and then?”

“Well, if you wanted to come over, we could watch one today,” Victor suggested. He could already feel his heart rate picking up at the possibility of him and Benji having the house all to themselves for a few hours.

“Can’t,” Benji said, sounding very regretful. “I’m going out to brunch pretty soon with my parents – it’s this thing we do once a month – and then I’ve got band practice.”

“Oh, okay.” Suddenly that empty house sensation of loneliness was back in full force.

Benji must have heard the disappointment in his voice, because he said, “But hey, you could probably join us if you want. And then you can finally come meet my bandmates this afternoon. I mean, if you’re not seeing your dad later.”

That sounded a million times better than sitting around at home by himself, so about thirty minutes later Victor pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant where he was meeting the Campbells. It turned out to be the same diner he’d gone to with Felix last fall, on the day that Victor had come out to him. He was kind of surprised that they’d picked this place; it was a local favorite, but more so with the people who lived on the outskirts of town, the farmers and working class population. He would’ve expected Amelia and Mike to prefer somewhere a little more sophisticated, but the fact that they’d chosen this place had Victor immediately feeling more at ease about going out to eat with them. It also helped that Amelia got up from her seat right away when he walked up to their table and gave him a quick hug.

“Good morning,” she said warmly, and Mike nodded and added, “Nice to see you, Victor.”

Victor slid into the booth beside Benji a little awkwardly, still not quite sure how to greet him when they were in public. One would think that in the three weeks that had passed by since Victor came out at school he’d have figured this out by now, but every time he met Benji with other people around he found himself second-guessing everything all over again. Giving Benji a kiss right there in front of his parents in the middle of an extremely crowded restaurant felt like too much, but on the other hand, not kissing him made Victor worry that he was letting Benji down somehow.

In the end he settled on a nervous smile and just saying “hi” as he sat down. He relaxed when Benji smiled back, brushing his hand against Victor’s knee under the table as he said, “Morning, V.”

“So I heard that the Tex Mex at this place is supposed to be great,” Mike commented while they all looked over the menu.

“Yeah,” Victor agreed, “the _huevos rancheros_ are really good, and the _chilaquiles_ with beans. That’s what I usually get when I come here.”

“I’m afraid I’ve got no idea what any of that is,” Amelia admitted, so Victor explained. She smiled at his description of the _chilaquiles_ and shot Mike a teasing look. “It’s nice to know that _some_ people in this country enjoy beans with their fry ups.”

Mike shook his head fondly. His southern drawl was a little more pronounced than usual when he told her, “Nothing wrong with a nice bowl of grits in the morning.”

“Ugh, grits are the worst,” Benji complained, wrinkling his nose, and Victor had to agree.

They placed their orders with a harried looking waitress a few minutes later. Victor had already eaten with his own family, so he just got a coffee and stole some of Benji’s chunky, southern-style hash browns, a pleased warmth growing inside him every time Benji let him get away with it.

“How have things been at school lately?” Amelia asked. “Has it got any better for you two?”

“Uh, yeah, a bit,” Benji told her. “I think people are finally starting to chill out about us by this point.”

That was true, but some days continued to be pretty rough. While most of their classmates had begun to lose interest in them being a couple, there were still those annoying few that couldn’t seem to let it go and dealing with them was getting exhausting. The worst was Teddy, who hadn’t let up at all in his attempts to make Victor’s life miserable. In the last two weeks, he’d tripped Victor in the hallway, shoved him into a water fountain, intentionally knocked Victor’s lunch all over the floor in the cafeteria, and made sure to hurl a homophobic insult at Victor anytime they ran into each other. Their second detention had been a total nightmare, since they’d ended up with Mr. Laurent, Victor’s math teacher, overseeing it. He’d assigned everyone an essay to write as punishment and then proceeded to work through a pile of grading at his desk, completely ignoring the way Teddy spent most of their four hours trying to find new ways of tormenting Victor by throwing bits of paper at him, poking him in the back with his pen, and most frustrating of all, accidentally-on-purpose spilling soda all over Victor’s half-finished essay so that he’d been forced to rewrite the entire thing.

That last offense was irritating enough that Victor had tried complaining to Mr. Laurent about it, but Laurent had just accepted Teddy’s excuse that it had been an accident and gone right back to his grading. He wouldn’t even look at Victor for more than a second, avoiding eye contact as he’d been doing ever since Victor came out at school.

Victor was doing his absolute best to try and ignore all of it. He didn’t want to get into more trouble or disappoint the important people in his life by losing his temper, and he also didn’t think that going to one of his teachers would make much of a difference after his experiences with Principal Meyers and Mr. Laurent. So ignoring Teddy and going out of his way to avoid him was all Victor could do for the moment.

Amelia looked relieved at Benji’s reassurance that things were getting better for them, so Victor put his own concerns out of his mind and forced himself to smile. Below the table, he felt Benji’s hand slip over to give his a squeeze.

“Thank goodness for that,” Amelia said. “I’m still thinking of having another go at convincing the P. T. A. of the importance of diversity and anti-bullying training. It’s hard to believe that in this day and age you boys still have to deal with so much ignorance. I mean, we’re not living in the nineteen-fifties anymore. You’d think a school would be able to provide a safe environment for _all_ of its students, including the ones who identify as queer.”

“Amelia,” Mike said tightly, his lips thinning as he glanced at the crowded tables around them.

“Oh, stop it,” Amelia snapped, while Benji visibly tensed up beside Victor. “We’ve been over this before, Mike. There’s nothing wrong with using that word nowadays.”

“She’s right, Dad, it’s fine. As long as it’s used appropriately it’s not an offensive word anymore,” Benji explained, in a somewhat impatient tone that had Victor guessing this wasn’t the first time they’d discussed it. “And no one’s even listening right now anyway, but if they were it wouldn’t matter because we don’t have anything to hide.”

Victor found himself staring guiltily down at the table during this exchange, aware of the fact that he’d also felt uncomfortable when Amelia had said that word loud enough for anyone nearby to overhear. Just like Mike, he’d had the urge to look at the people sitting around them, but his discomfort ran deeper than just worrying about receiving some negative attention. The truth was, the word ‘queer’ itself bothered him. Benji and Simon said it all the time, and he knew that it was commonly used by most people in the LGBTQ community now, but growing up he’d heard it in negative contexts more often than positive ones, and his gut reaction to it was still an immediate pang of anxiety.

“I wasn’t trying to suggest that you have to hide,” Mike replied. He was holding himself so stiffly, his knuckles going white around the fork in his hand. “This just might not be the best place to draw attention to that kind of thing.” When Benji and Amelia began to protest, he continued quickly, in a more forceful voice than Victor was used to hearing from him, “Look, I grew up in a small town like this, okay? I know how people in these kinds of places think, maybe better than you two do. I just don’t want there to be any trouble.”

“People can be kinda… old-fashioned in Brandon,” Victor admitted. An older man at a table near theirs had been staring at Victor for a little while now, for who knew what reason – maybe he’d heard what Amelia had said, maybe it was something else, like Victor’s brown skin – but whatever it was, it was putting him on edge. “Sometimes you do have to be careful what you say in public.”

It wasn’t just the memories of all the insults and bullying he’d endured during the last few weeks that made him say that. Along with them he remembered the time his family had been out at lunch in Brandon with his _abuelos_ a couple of years ago, all of them chatting mainly in Spanish. A woman had walked past and snapped at them to “speak English if they were going to live in this country.” A heated argument had followed that remark, and eventually the woman shook her head at them in disgust and left, but even after she was gone her hateful words had remained. There had been times since then when he and his family used whatever language they wanted to in public without thinking twice about it, but there were also times and places when English felt easier. Safer. When Victor wasn’t comfortable drawing more attention to the ways in which he was different.

“So, what, you think we should censor ourselves all the time just to keep the bigots in this town comfortable?” Benji asked, a hurt in his narrowed eyes that took Victor by surprise, dragging him out of his bad memory and back into the present moment.

“No,” Victor started to say, a cold flood of anxiety washing over him at the look on his boyfriend’s face, “I just meant-”

There was a buzzing noise all of a sudden, and Mike pulled his phone out of his pocket. He answered it in a strangely cheerful voice, as though the last few minutes hadn’t happened, saying, “Hey there, Isaac. No, it’s fine. We’re just out at brunch. You picked a good time to call, since we’ve got everyone here now. Yeah, Benji’s here, too.”

Victor darted a concerned look at Benji, who had folded his arms over his chest and was staring moodily out the window. He had shifted away from Victor on the bench and the gap of a few inches between them felt more like miles. Victor wished that he could have had the chance to explain what he was trying to say but now that Isaac had called there was no way of doing so.

Mike switched the speaker phone on, and a guy whose voice sounded very similar to Benji’s, although somewhat deeper, said, “Good morning, everyone. How’s life down in Texas?”

“Would you believe that it was snowing earlier?” Amelia asked. “We didn’t get much, but it looks lovely out there right now.”

“Whoah, that’s crazy. It’s pretty warm here in Atlanta. Me and Tammy were actually planning to hang out at Grant Park later since there’s some foodie event going on today that she wants to check out.”

“How’s she doing? Don’t tell me she’s rooting for the Buccaneers next weekend,” Mike said.

“After they signed Brady? Are you kidding me? She’s a good southern girl, she’s not cheering for some yankee quarterback.”

This launched a discussion about the Super Bowl and which team was more likely to win, as well as the party Isaac and Tammy were planning on hosting for their friends the following weekend. Mike and Isaac did most of the talking, although Amelia took an interest in the party preparations and what dishes they were planning to make, and the longer the conversation went on the more jovial Mike became. Conversely, Benji seemed to get tenser and more withdrawn, not bothering to finish the rest of his meal as he stared silently out at the snow covered parking lot outside.

“What are you guys doing next Sunday?” Isaac asked.

“Oh, I’ll be watching the game at George’s place. That’s the new foreman I’ve been working with this past month,” Mike said, and gave Benji and Amelia a look of exasperation. “You know I’d be watching it alone at our house.”

“Aw, c’mon, Benji, you can’t even tune in for the Super Bowl? Not even to keep your old man company?” Isaac teased.

“Like he’d want to watch it with me,” Benji snapped in annoyance. “Anyway, I usually practice with the band on Sundays.”

“That’s cool… Uh, how’s that going?”

“Good. My boyfriend, Victor, is here with us right now at breakfast. He’s coming with me to meet my bandmates after this.”

“Oh,” Isaac said awkwardly, “Sorry, didn’t realize he was with you guys. Um, nice to meet you, Victor.”

Victor cleared his throat and said, “Uh, yeah, nice to meet you, too.”

“So… are you also a sophomore?”

“Yep.”

This was one of the most uncomfortable conversations Victor had ever been part of, especially since he could tell that Benji was still upset with him about what he’d said earlier. Victor desperately searched his brain for something else to say and drew a blank, but fortunately Amelia came to his rescue.

“Victor’s actually on the basketball team at school,” she said. “What position was it that you played again? Sorry, I’m a little out of my depth here.”

“Point guard.”

“Oh, nice. You must be good then,” Isaac said, and then began to ask Victor some questions about the team’s record so far that year. He was grateful for something to talk about to fill the awkward silence from a moment ago, but it was hard to miss the fact that Benji seemed to be getting even more irritated now that the topic had returned to sports again so quickly.

Everyone lingered at the table chatting with Isaac for another half hour, Benji hardly speaking at all, and Victor was incredibly relieved when Isaac said he had to go and they were able to leave as well for Benji’s band practice. Victor was going to drive them both to Carl’s house, where the band was practicing that day, so Benji grabbed his guitar case from his parent’s car and then climbed into the truck with Victor. Victor plugged Carl’s address into his phone and started driving, glancing at Benji nervously out of the corner of his eye.

“Are you okay?” he asked, after a few minutes had passed by with neither of them saying anything. “If you don’t want me to come anymore, I can just drop you off there.”

Benji sighed, continuing to stare out the window rather than look at Victor. “It’s fine. It’s the first chance we’ve had for you to come to one of our practices, so you should be there.”

“All right,” Victor agreed. “Do you, uh – do you wanna talk about what happened at the restaurant?”

“I’m not really in the mood right now,” Benji said, reaching out to press one of the buttons on the dashboard. “Let’s just listen to the radio.”

“Okay…” Victor said, letting out a disappointed sigh himself. He and Benji had never really fought about anything before, and he hated the tense, painful distance that was growing between them so much. He wanted to just hash everything out, try to find some way to explain what he meant earlier, but he was afraid of making things worse by forcing the issue when Benji didn’t want to talk.

The silence lasted all the way to Carl’s place, which was a large two story on the outskirts of town. It had a decent amount of land surrounding it and one of those enormous garages that only existed in the countryside, the kind that was detached from the rest of the house and probably doubled as a workshop or something. Benji let them in through a door on the side of the building, where the rest of the band was already in the process of setting up. Victor was relieved to see that Feña had come to watch the practice as well, so at least he’d have somebody to hang out with.

“Hey guys, this is my boyfriend, Victor,” Benji said, sounding a little subdued but obviously trying not to let his bad mood show. He nodded toward the other members of the band as he introduced them, “That’s Hailey, Carl, and Jason.”

Jason, the keyboardist, looked up from where he was trying to untangle a bunch of power cords. “Yo, what’s up.”

“Hey, good to finally meet you, Victor,” Hailey said, pausing in the middle of a conversation with Feña. She gave him a friendly smile. “We’ve heard a lot about you.”

Carl laughed. “Yeah, this guy, like, never shuts up about you, man. Must be true love.”

Victor smiled half-heartedly, doing his best to ignore the way that Benji was grimacing in what seemed to be a combination of embarrassment and annoyance.

“You should see them at school,” Feña teased. “The way they’ve been making eyes at each other all year has not exactly been discreet. It continues to amaze me that no one else noticed what was going on there.”

The topic seriously needed to change immediately, before the tension that he could sense radiating off of Benji got any worse. Victor took a seat next to Feña on one of the bean bag chairs that had been placed off to the side and said loudly, “So what are you guys working on today?”

Carl described some of the stuff on the set list they were putting together for a gig in Dallas at the end of the month, most of which Victor had already heard about from Benji. No one else seemed to notice Benji’s bad mood, or so Victor thought until the band got started playing and Feña leaned over to him.

“ _Qué pasó con tu novio?_ _Se ve enojado._ ”

She hadn’t really bothered to lower her voice much, and they were close enough to the others to be overheard even with the music starting up since the song they were working on at the moment was a quiet one. Victor glanced at them nervously, and Feña rolled her eyes at him. “Relax,” she said, “ _no nos pueden entender_.”

So Victor explained to her in Spanish about what had happened at the restaurant that morning. It was hard to concentrate on the conversation with Benji right there, singing beautifully and moving his hands expertly over the strings of his guitar, distractingly hot even in the midst of the fight or the misunderstanding or whatever it was that was going on with them at the moment. The way the fabric of his shirt kept hugging the muscles in his arms as he played, and how he reached up every so often to push his hair back was definitely making Victor feel a little overheated.

“Victor, you’re getting that glazed over look again,” Feña said dryly, continuing to speak in Spanish. He blushed and tore his eyes away from Benji in order to look at her. “Listen, I get what you’re saying about the people in Brandon being ignorant assholes sometimes. Anybody who’s different in this town has to know how to pick their battles. But Benji – and his mom – they have the right to say what they want to in public just like you do.”

“I know that but… Honestly, even though I try really hard not to, I think I just sometimes expect the worst of people here because of the shitty stuff some of them have done in the past. When Benji’s dad said that he understood what people are like in towns like this, I knew what he meant, and it just seems like Benji doesn’t get it sometimes. He grew up in a big city, with a fairly liberal family. He’s had to deal with a lot of crap since he came to Brandon, but I think he still has higher expectations of people than I do.”

“Me and Carl have to put up with a lot of crap in this town, too. Carl especially. Last week we were going to his house and a cop pulled him over for literally no reason other than him driving while Black. So, yeah, there’s probably some stuff about Brandon that Benji isn’t going to get unless you explain it to him.”

Victor nodded. “I wanted to, but he was so grumpy after breakfast that we didn’t really talk on the way over here. I’ll have to try and explain what I meant to him later if he’s willing to talk to me then.”

Feña smiled wryly. “I’m sure you guys will work it out and get back to gazing lovingly at each other in no time.”

“Shut up,” Victor said, pushing her shoulder lightly. “Like you weren’t just drooling over Carl five seconds ago.”

“Can I help it if he looks really damn hot holding a guitar?”

Victor laughed at the dreamy look on her face. “So… does anyone know about you and Carl yet?”

“Actually… uh, my parents kinda found out about us last week,” Feña admitted. “And they were predictably dramatic about it. My mom totally lost her shit over the fact that he’s in college and everything. You’d think he was ten years older than me rather than just two with the way she was screaming about it.”

Victor winced. “That really sucks.”

“Yeah. Well, I’m sure you get it. Is your dad still being a dick about you and Benji?”

He nodded tightly, eyes drifting over to Benji yet again as he remembered how tense things had gotten with Armando last weekend. Apparently his dad’s version of doing better so far just meant acting like Victor coming out had never happened. Just mentioning Benji last Sunday had been too much for him. “Why do parents have to be so complicated?”

“I think it’s just that _people_ are complicated,” Feña said with a laugh.

Victor was still watching Benji, eyes tracking his movements as he drank some water and tuned his guitar in between songs. When the next one started up, Victor recognized it immediately as the one Benji had learned just to to surprise him at Brasstown a few weeks ago. As the Spanish words rolled off his tongue, Victor’s heart started pounding, and it felt like it might leap right out of his chest when Benji looked over and their gazes caught. Benji’s eyes seemed to soften then, the icy distance from earlier melting away. There was remorse in his expression now instead, which inspired a similar feeling in Victor. He wished they could just go somewhere by themselves for awhile, where they could finally move past the stupid tension they’d been trapped in all afternoon.

Feña let out a whistle as Benji got to the chorus, clapping and shouting out, “ _¡Eso!”_

She turned to him with an incredulous smile and said, “Geez, Victor, did you hit the boyfriend jackpot or what? Carl is going to have to up his game with me. I have yet to be serenaded with sexy songs in Spanish and that is seriously not fair.”

A wide smile was spreading across his own lips, and he couldn’t look away from Benji, not even for a second. He clapped along with Feña to the rhythm of the music and felt so impatient for the moment when he could have Benji all to himself again. He had to wait through another three songs, and as much as he was enjoying the performance, he was glad when Carl finally announced a break.

“I’m just gonna go get some fresh air for a sec,” Victor told Feña, catching Benji’s eyes and nodding toward the door.

Feña shook her head at him. “Subtle.”

He felt himself blush a little at the teasing, but he ignored it and headed for the door anyway. Although it wasn’t as bitterly cold as it had been that morning, it was still chilly enough that he tucked his hands under his arms to warm them and began to reconsider his idea of talking outside.

“Hey,” Benji said, stepping out a moment later. He immediately winced as a gust of cold wind blasted by them. “Why don’t we go sit in the truck for a minute?”

Victor nodded in enthusiastic agreement and led the way over. As soon as they were inside he started the car up and got the heat going. He turned to Benji then, saying, “About earlier-” at the exact same moment that Benji said, “Sorry for-”

They both stopped and laughed awkwardly. Victor waited for Benji to speak.

“Look, I shouldn’t have gotten so worked up over what you said this morning. I mean, it’s something that we’ve talked about before, right? There are times when maybe you won’t feel comfortable being out and I get that. I feel the same way sometimes. I’m sorry for making a big deal out of it.”

It was tempting to simply accept Benji’s apology and spend the rest of the band’s break time making out with him in the car, but there was more to what had happened and Victor didn’t want to just ignore it.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You were right, too. We shouldn’t have to censor ourselves to make other people happy. It’s just… well, sometimes it can be hard living in Brandon if you’re not, like, a straight white guy. Which you already know, obviously. You’ve had to deal with a lot since you came here but, uh… But I’ve lived here my entire life. People have come up to my family in town before and yelled at us not to speak Spanish. One time my second grade teacher told my mom that if we didn’t use only English at home it would slow down my development with reading and stuff. I remember my mom getting really upset about it and them having a big fight at my parent-teacher conference, and I spent the rest of that year feeling weird about ever speaking Spanish at school. The point is, I’ve been thinking about what I say when I’m in public since I was a little kid. It doesn’t mean that I want to just let the ignorant people win by never speaking Spanish, or never talking about being gay, it’s just that I kind of got what your dad was saying. Sometimes the people in towns like this can be… exhausting.”

Benji sat there quietly for a moment, before he slid his hand over to Victor’s. Victor turned his palm up and laced their fingers together, grateful for the warmth of Benji’s skin against his own. “Thank you for telling me that,” Benji said, a heavy sadness in his voice. “It’s beyond shitty that you have put up with racist crap like that on top of the homophobia that you’re experiencing now. To be honest, it wasn’t really what you said earlier that got me upset… it was more the way it felt like you were siding with my dad on that issue, and then Isaac calling when he did only made things worse. It always feels like my dad forgets I exist the second Isaac’s around.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean for it to seem like I was picking sides or something,” Victor said. “I just feel the same way sometimes – like the people here aren’t worth the trouble of getting into fights with. And then there are other times when _all_ I want to do is get into fights with them. It just depends on the time and place and how I’m feeling, I guess. But, uh… when your mom said the word ‘queer’ so loudly earlier… it made me uncomfortable, too. I still don’t really like that word.”

Benji frowned. “Why not? I mean, you know it’s not just an insult anymore, right?”

“Yeah, I know. It’s hard to erase, like, sixteen years of hearing people use it as one, though.”

“That’s kind of the point in saying it,” Benji argued gently. “To take away power from the people that want to hurt us by using it in a new, more positive way. By taking back ownership of the word and redefining what it means for ourselves. It’s not just the word, it’s the whole idea behind it – this idea of being other and choosing to embrace that otherness.”

There was definitely something about the way Benji had phrased that that Victor liked. _Choosing to embrace that otherness._ Victor was still learning how to do that when it came to being gay, still learning what it meant to be other in that sense. But he understood otherness as it related to the rest of his life. He was proud of his heritage, proud of the places his family came from and the languages they spoke and the cultures they had learned to weave together here in Texas. He got why being different was something that should be celebrated – that should be _embraced_.

Growing up bilingual he’d always understood the importance of language in a way he didn’t think others who grew up with only one language could. He knew from his experiences in Brandon that there was power in language. Power to elevate people, but also power to keep others down. The words – the language – you chose to use mattered.

“That makes a lot of sense, actually,” Victor said, slow and thoughtful. “I like the idea of that. Of taking back the power in the word. Figuring out how to make being different something worth celebrating.”

“Well, that’s good news,” Benji said, “because I kinda have an idea related to that which I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.”

Victor had only been to Brandon College a handful of times, usually for some kind of special event that was happening on campus. Benji seemed to know his way around though, leading him along a confusing series of paths which snaked between tall brick buildings that all basically looked the same to Victor. It was no wonder he had gotten completely lost that night that he’d run away from Benji in the dark after kissing him for the first time. Although given his state of mind that night he probably could’ve gotten lost in his own backyard.

It looked different in the daytime, especially on a Tuesday afternoon when there were crowds of college students everywhere he looked. In true Texas fashion, the weather was now warm and sunny enough for hanging around outside to be enjoyable, despite the fact that it had just snowed a couple of days prior. On their way across the campus, they passed groups of people doing everything from yoga to touch football to rehearsing for some kind of theater performance. There were also a lot of students just studying or talking at the tables and benches scattered around the park-like spaces between the buildings, their heads bent over laptops and cups of coffee.

There was an energy in the air that had Victor looking forward to when he’d be going off to college, his head filling up with daydreams of what it would be like to finally leave Brandon and start his own life somewhere new. The fact that it was only about a couple of years away left him feeling terrified and excited all at once.

“Do you know what you wanna do after graduation?” he found himself asking Benji.

Benji shrugged. “I’m not really sure yet. Mum’s been bugging me to start thinking about schools, but it’s kinda hard to know where to start when I’m not even sure what I want to study. What about you?”

“I have no idea. I guess I feel like I can put off figuring that stuff out until next year, you know? It’s just… uh, this might be kind of dumb, but…”

Benji bumped their shoulders together playfully. “But what?”

“Well, I guess ever since I started talking to Simon, I’ve been thinking it might be cool to go to college somewhere in New York.”

“Why would that be dumb?” Benji asked. He led them up to a brick building nearly indistinguishable from all the others except for the sign labeling it Cramer Hall, pulling open one of the large doors and stepping inside. Victor followed him in and up a staircase.

“I don’t know… Maybe because the schools there are hard to get into and also crazy expensive?”

“Both of those things are true, but you’re a good student, Victor. If you really want it, I bet you can make it happen.”

Benji’s confidence in him had him feeling warm all over. He was still smiling when they got to the third floor and walked over to a room with the words “Queer Resource Center” written over the door and a pride flag hanging in the window next to it, alongside a bunch of fliers advertising various meetings and events. The sight of that word in big, bold letters made his smile falter, made him want to look over his shoulder at first, to check who might be watching them. Victor shoved the feeling away, reminding himself of what he and Benji had talked about as Benji took Victor’s hand in his and led him inside.

If there was ever a place that was trying to embrace otherness – embrace _queerness_ – this was it.

A big open space lay before them, with a bunch of circular tables in the middle, some desks and offices off to one side, and a kind of mini library with a couple of couches in the back corner. There were two people seated on one of them who seemed to be in the middle of a conversation, and some others working at the desks, but other than that it was fairly quiet. Victor stopped near the doorway, looking wide-eyed around the room at the assortment of rainbow-themed decorations, the brightly colored, extremely queer posters featuring bands and movies and things he wasn’t familiar with, and the various flags and symbols of pride tacked to the walls (the only two he could recognize were the regular flag and the blue, white, and pink trans one). On a desk right next to where he was standing was a big bowl sitting underneath a sign labeled ‘Safe sex is sexy! Help yourself.’ It was filled with condoms and other types of protection he’d never seen before and which he couldn’t guess the usage of (he could feel his face heating up as he tried to figure out what the heck a dental dam was). His mouth was definitely hanging open as he stood there completely overwhelmed by everything he was seeing.

“Wow,” was pretty much the only thing he was capable of saying in response to all of it.

Benji laughed. “This place just totally blew your mind, didn’t it.”

“It’s just so…”

“Queer?” Benji supplied, grinning.

“Yeah,” Victor said, finally snapping his mouth shut. He caught his boyfriend’s eyes and shook his head in amazement. “I’ve never seen so much gay stuff in one place before.”

A woman with dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail walked up to them just then, a friendly and somewhat amused smile on her face. “This is a university that specializes in theater and the arts. We have to work pretty damn hard to be the queerest thing on campus.”

“Dani, hey!” Benji said as the woman pulled him into a hug. “Thanks so much for letting us come here today.”

“No worries. This must be Victor.” She extended a hand to Victor which he shook. “It’s great to finally meet you.”

“Yeah, you, too.”

Dani had fair skin spotted with freckles and an athletic look about her, slender and probably only an inch or two shorter than Victor. There was a laid back quality to her that put Victor instantly at ease, making it obvious why Benji had chosen her as his sponsor.

“You really work here?” Victor asked, unable to hide the amazement in his voice.

“Sure do,” Dani answered. “I actually manage the finances for the center, so it’s not all fun and games, but it’s still a pretty cool place to work. I get to help plan a lot of events and parties, and organize trips, and stuff like that. We’re hosting a queer film festival in a couple of weeks, by the way. You guys should come check it out if you’re interested.”

“Definitely,” Benji said, catching Victor’s eye and smiling at the excitement that was no doubt written all over his face. The idea of going to an event all about queer stuff and probably getting to be around a lot of other people who were just like them had Victor feeling overwhelmed all over again.

“The other kids from your school are already here,” Dani said, nodding toward the area with all the books. “That’s them over in the reading corner.”

Victor took another look at the two people sitting on the couch, both of which looked familiar now that he was paying closer attention to them. One of them was a girl with short blond hair dyed blue at the ends and a fashion sense that reminded him a lot of Pilar. She was talking animatedly with the guy beside her, who Victor definitely recognized as a junior or maybe senior, someone that he’d noticed in the past (despite his best efforts not to) because of his dark wavy hair and smooth, lightly tanned skin.

“Hey guys,” Benji said, after the three of them had walked over and sat down on the other sofa. “This is my boyfriend, Victor, and I think you’ve already met my friend, Dani.”

Dani nodded. “Yeah, we talked a bit before you guys got here.”

Benji continued the introductions, saying, “Victor, this is Maggie and Anthony. Anthony’s a junior and Maggie, you’re a freshman, right?”

“Yep,” Maggie said, giving Victor a small smile. “I know your sister, actually. We have a couple of classes together and we hang out sometimes.”

Ever since Benji had explained his idea to Victor after the band practice on Sunday evening, Victor had been feeling intensely curious about the two other queer kids that Benji apparently knew at Brandon High School. They had each approached him separately last fall, both of them needing someone to talk to, and until recently Benji had been the only openly queer student. Neither of them were out, which was why Benji hadn’t mentioned them to him before, but now that they would all be working together Maggie and Anthony had agreed to meet with Benji, Victor, and Dani in order to discuss Benji’s plan to start a GSA.

“I don’t think we’ve ever met,” Anthony said, leaning forward to shake Victor’s hand, “but you’re kinda famous at school, so I’ve definitely heard about you.”

“Famous?” Dani echoed, laughing a bit as Victor shrank back in his seat in embarrassment.

“He’s the star basketball player who won Homecoming King and then scandalized the whole school by first breaking up with the Homecoming Queen and then coming out as gay,” Anthony explained. “So yeah, it’s hard not to know who Victor Salazar is nowadays.”

“It’s true, Victor’s big coming out is all anyone was talking about for the last three weeks,” Maggie agreed. “I honestly thought his sister was gonna cut a guy in homeroom for not shutting up about it the other day.”

That was the first Victor had heard about Pilar getting into a fight on his behalf and he was definitely going to have to ask Maggie about the details later.

Maggie let out a sigh. “All the craziness about Victor has kinda made me rethink my plan to come out as pan to my friends soon. Although, maybe no one will really make a big deal out of it when it’s just some random freshman girl.”

“People do love to gossip at BHS. You should probably be prepared for it if you do decide to tell your friends, but hopefully this club will help with stuff like that,” Benji said.

“So, what exactly do we need to do to get a Gay Straight Alliance started?” Victor asked, turning to look at Benji and Dani.

Victor was embarrassed to realize that he’d somehow already stuck his foot in his mouth when Dani explained, “That’s actually the old name for it. Nowadays GSA stands for Genders and Sexualities Alliance, in order to be more inclusive.”

Anthony said pointedly, “Yeah, we’re not all gay in this club, believe it or not.”

“Oh, of course. Sorry.” Victor couldn’t help wondering how Anthony identified if he _wasn’t_ gay, which had been Victor’s initial assumption, but he wasn’t sure it was okay to ask about it.

Anthony seemed to know what Victor wasn’t saying, because he told him, “It’s cool. I’m actually trans, by the way, and straight. I use he/him pronouns.”

“We probably should have gotten that out of the way with our introductions. She/her for me,” Dani said, and then the rest of them all shared their own. Once that was done, Dani gestured at some of the pamphlets and books she had laid out on the table in front of them. “I gathered up some stuff for you guys that should help you get your club started. It’s not that complicated really, you mostly just do all the same stuff you would normally do when starting a club at school, like finding an advisor and getting permission from the principal.”

Victor thought about going to Principal Meyers and telling him that they wanted to start a GSA, and felt an immediate pang of dread. “Well, me and Benji were talking about it and there’s a few teachers we could ask to be the advisor, so I don’t think that will be too hard, but, uh… that last thing might be more difficult. Our principal isn’t exactly the most open minded guy…”

“He can’t actually stop you, though,” Dani pointed out. “You have a legal right to be able to form a GSA at your school if you want to. But it is possible he might try to slow things down or get in the way somehow. If you have any trouble, just let me know and I’ll do what I can to help.”

“The really tough part isn’t going to be dealing with the principal,” Anthony said then, a tense look on his face. “The worst thing will be our classmates. I transitioned before I moved to Brandon, so no one else knows about me at school, and I’m worried about what might happen if people find out about our club. We’re going to have to work really hard to make it a safe space for all of us, and anyone else who decides to join us.”

Benji nodded and said, “But that’s why we have to do it. Because there _isn’t_ a safe space for people like us right now and there really needs to be. There’s definitely a risk that we’ll get some backlash for trying to do this, but… it’s worth it. So, are you guys in? Are we actually doing this?”

“You already know I’m in,” Victor said, without any hesitation. He’d gone through a lot at school recently, and this club might be a way to finally make some of it better. He was totally ready to try, for himself, and Benji, and anyone else that might need it.

Anthony glanced over at Maggie for a moment uncertainly, and she gave him a firm nod. “I’m in, too,” she said, voice quiet but sure, so Anthony met Benji’s eyes and told him, “Okay, me, too. Let’s do this.”


	39. Valentine's Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: homophobia, use of homophobic slurs (including the "f" word), bullying, mild violence, mild sexual content/frank discussion about sex
> 
> Since music is such a big part of this story, I've put together a playlist of the main songs that have been featured in it so far. With a few exceptions (mostly Dolly Parton), all the artists on the list are either queer or Latinx in order to reflect the themes of the story. You can find it on Youtube [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHP6IdHiqyUVmbBvB45cNdCEenUgMpbB-).

“So how are things going with that club you guys are starting?” Lake asked at lunch on Friday. “What was it called again?”

“A Genders and Sexualities Alliance, otherwise known as a GSA. Did you know that the first ones were started in San Francisco in the late nineties, but now there are over four thousand of them all across the U.S.?” Felix rambled. “The history is actually pretty interesting-”

“How do you know all this stuff?” Benji interrupted him in surprise.

Feña raised a brow. “Yeah, Felix. That’s like the third time you’ve educated us about some kind of gay thing this week. Do you have anything you’d like to share with us?”

“You know,” Felix began, slow and thoughtful, “I did give it some consideration, but I’m like ninety-nine percent sure that I’m just your average, boring, run of the mill straight cis guy.”

“Straight what guy?” Feña asked, at the same time that Victor said, “Wait, ninety- _nine_ percent?”

Grinning, Felix said, “Yeah. I’m reserving that last one percent for Chris Hemsworth.”

“Ooh, nice choice, babe,” Lake said with a playful smile, leaning over to give Felix a kiss.

Mia rolled her eyes at the two of them when what had started out as a quick peck became a bit more heated. Maybe to distract herself from all the PDA occurring right next to her, she turned to Victor and Benji and asked, “So! What’s happening with the club?”

“Well, we found an advisor faster than we were expecting, so we actually turned in all the paperwork for it on Tuesday. Now we’re just waiting to hear back from Principal Meyers about whether or not it’s been approved,” Victor explained.

“That seems kinda slow,” Alicia said. “When we started the Anime Club last year, Meyers just signed the forms while we were there in his office. It only took, like, fifteen minutes.”

Benji shook his head in annoyance. “What a surprise. Meyers is definitely dragging his feet on purpose, but I guess all we can do is ask our advisor to nag him about it again.”

“Who’d you guys get, anyway?” Alicia asked.

“My homeroom teacher, Ms. Albright. She mostly teaches the theater classes,” Benji told her. “She doesn’t seem like the type to put up with a lot of crap, so hopefully she’ll be able to get Meyers to sign off on the club soon.”

Alicia nodded. “Oh yeah, she’s amazing. If anyone can make him do it, she can. Hey, um, is it okay for me to come to one of your meetings when it gets started? I mean, I don’t know if ‘boring, run of the mill’ straight people are welcome to join…”

“ _Everyone_ is welcome, ‘boring straight people’ included,” Victor said dryly, making Felix grin and say, “Excellent, I will definitely be there.”

“So, what are everyone’s V Day plans?” Lake stared at Felix pointedly. “ _Someone_ is being super mysterious about it and the suspense is totes killing me over here.”

Felix shook his head at her. “You’ll find out tomorrow, and I promise you it will be worth the wait.”

Victor had already heard about Felix’s plans in great detail in the car that morning and also by walkie-talkie the day before. It involved a lot of elaborate homemade gifts and a date at a French restaurant in Dallas that Felix had somehow had the foresight to book back in early December. He’d apparently been doing all kinds of part time gigs to save up the money for it. Victor was both impressed and intimidated by the amount of effort Felix was putting into the holiday, seeing as he still hadn’t even figured out if he should give Benji anything, or what kind of gift to give him if he was doing that, and now there were only about twenty-four hours left to make a decision.

“Well, what about you guys?” Lake asked them.

Benji smiled over at Victor, his hand coming to rest on Victor’s knee under the table. “That’s top secret information, sorry.”

“Ugh, you’re no fun,” Lake pouted.

The heat of Benji’s hand through the fabric of his jeans was becoming extremely distracting. He found himself hoping that whatever Benji was planning, it involved the kind of alone time that they’d been seeking out as often as they could over the past couple of weeks. It had been four days since the last time and he was already impatiently counting down to the next opportunity. The crowded cafeteria surrounded by all of his friends was probably not the best time for those kind of thoughts, though, so Victor forced himself to ignore Benji’s hand on his leg and focus back in on the conversation.

“I for one will be sitting around at home binge watching reality TV this year with my mom,” Alicia said.

Mia smiled knowingly. “That was kinda my plan, too. Except, you know, by myself.”

Alicia brightened, looking to Mia and Feña. “Hey, maybe us single ladies should hang out tomorrow night!”

“Sure,” Mia agreed, so Alicia turned expectantly to Feña who flushed a little and said, “I, uh, might not actually be one of the single ladies…”

There was a round of surprised exclamations, followed by everyone demanding to hear all the details of Feña’s no-longer-secret relationship. At some point, Feña caved to peer pressure and dug out her phone, passing around a photo of Carl for the others to see. Lake was teasing her about how cute Carl was when suddenly a voice from behind Victor shouted, _“Think fast, Salazar!_ ”

Reacting purely on instinct, Victor ducked, flinching as whatever had just been thrown at him hit Felix instead with a loud popping noise. Something wet and cold spattered across Victor’s side from the force of the impact, and when he raised his head, he was shocked to see Felix covered in some kind of foul smelling, dirty brown liquid, with lumpy, slimy looking stuff in it which was now plastered all over his clothes and shoes. On the floor the remains of a ruptured water balloon was lying in a puddle of more of the mystery substance.

“Oh shit, dude, you got Lone Stone,” Kieran crowed, and Victor whipped around to find Kieran and Teddy a few feet away. Kieran was looking Felix up and down with a mean-spirited glint in his eyes, reminding Victor of the fact that Lake had rejected Kieran right before she started dating Felix.

Teddy shrugged, smirking over at them. “No big deal, then. It’s not like he has the _balls_ to do anything about it. This next one’s for you, fag.”

He reached into the wide pocket of his jacket then, removing a second water balloon, and swiftly swung his arm back to throw it straight at Victor. Victor didn’t have time to think, he just grabbed the nearest thing and held it up in front of himself as a shield. It turned out to be a lunch tray, the stuff that had been on it now spread across their table, and by some miracle instead of bursting the balloon bounced off of the tray intact and right back at Teddy. It exploded immediately, soaking him in more of the foul liquid, and a half-second later the room around them erupted into shouts and laughter.

 _“_ _I’m gonna fucking kill you,”_ Teddy roared, lunging toward Victor. He swung his fist at Victor’s face, but Victor ducked, and the blow only just clipped the side of his jaw. Even so, the sudden pain was jarring. He was still holding the tray so he lifted it up to protect himself, but Teddy was already being hauled away from him by Andrew and Tristan, another one of Victor’s teammates.

“Get off me!” Teddy snarled, struggling to free himself from their hold. Although Teddy wasn’t exactly a small guy, both Andrew and Tristan were easily twice Teddy’s size and had no trouble restraining him. Kieran moved to help his friend but before he could reach him, a couple of Andrew’s other jock friends jumped up and blocked his path.

Tristan wrapped both his arms around Teddy’s shoulders as Andrew stepped in front of them, staring Teddy down. “Dude, why do you keep doing shit like this? Look around you, man. No one’s impressed with your macho, gay bashing bullshit. The only one they’re all laughing at now is _you_.”

“Fuck you guys,” Teddy spat, glaring at his former teammates. “You’re all a bunch of fucking homos.”

Andrew rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sure. Call me whatever you want, Anderson. None of us care what you have to say anymore.”

The crowd around them continued to laugh and jeer, and Teddy had never looked smaller or more pathetic than he did just then. His clothes were completely ruined, he couldn’t break out of Tristan’s grasp no matter how hard he tried, and now Andrew – one of the most popular people at school – had just insulted him in front of everyone. Suddenly, Victor felt his own anger fading away to pity.

Victor set the tray down on the table and stood up. Catching Tristan’s eye, he said, “Just let him go.”

Andrew turned to him in surprise. “You sure about that?”

There were already a couple of teachers crossing the room toward them, so Victor wasn’t really worried about his own safety anymore. “Yeah. It’s fine, you can let him go now.”

The second Tristan let go of him, Teddy took a furious step forward, his eyes locked on Victor’s, but Andrew raised his arms and stopped him from getting any closer. Over Andrew’s shoulder, Teddy bit out, “I _will_ find a way to make you pay for this, Salazar. This isn’t fucking over-”

“Shut your damn mouth,” Ms. Albright snapped as she rushed over to them. “You sweaty, hormonal virgin.”

A round of gasps and laughter rippled through the crowd.

“You can’t talk to me like that,” Teddy protested, which only made Ms. Albright’s eyes go wide in angry disbelief.

“Oh yes I can, ‘cause I just did. It wasn’t bad enough being the kid that did the shitty thing in front of the whole school, now you wanna dig an even deeper hole for yourself by acting like you have some right to be pissed right now? The only ones who should be pissed off are Victor and Felix over there and _me_ , because now I’m gonna have to spend my afternoon dealing with your sorry ass, and they don’t pay me enough for this shit.”

Ms. Albright looked around at the mess on the floor, and the filth that was covering Felix and Teddy. “What the hell is this crap, anyway?”

Teddy’s jaw worked, and he looked away rather than answer. Kieran shifted guiltily, and when Ms. Albright demanded, “Well?” he was the one to cave first.

“It’s, uh, from the cafeteria trash bags,” Kieran mumbled.

Ms. Albright recoiled. “ _What_?”

Kieran reluctantly explained, “It’s, like… all that juice at the bottom of the trash bags.”

“So you two assholes thought it’d be cute to fill up a water balloon with that shit and then use it to commit a hate crime?” Neither Teddy nor Kieran had any response to that, so Ms. Albright shook her head at them in disgust. “Principal Meyers’ office now. Let’s go.”

She began to march them away, and the other teacher who had showed up, Mr. Collins, came over to speak with Felix and Victor.

“Are you two all right?”

“Just a little sticky,” Felix said, nose wrinkled in disgust.

“Same.” Victor glanced down at himself, inspecting the brown stains that spotted one side of his shirt and jeans. He was glad that he hadn’t worn anything he particularly cared about that day.

“Victor, he _hit_ you,” Benji pointed out.

Victor had been so focused on what was happening that he’d kind of forgotten about it. Now that everything had calmed down, Victor slowly became aware of the stiffness in his jaw and the way it was throbbing with the beat of his pulse. Mr. Collins leaned forward to take a closer look at it.

“You two should probably head to the gym to wash that junk off and put on some clean clothes. After that, go to Principal Meyers’ office. I’m sure he’ll want to hear your side of what happened today. Victor, make sure you stop at the nurse’s office at some point and get that looked at, okay?”

When Mr. Collins had left, Lake looked Felix up and down and exclaimed, “Oh, honey, I am so sorry. I would totally give you a hug right now, but, uh, you know…”

“You don’t want to end up covered in trash juice?” Felix finished for her wryly. “Can’t say I blame you. Those guys are a couple of homophobic losers but I guess you gotta give them some points for creativity.”

“Do you though?” Lake questioned.

“Are you okay, Victor? Does it hurt much?” Mia asked.

“I’ll be fine,” Victor reassured her. The others at the table all offered him and Felix their sympathies, and Victor was grateful for their support but he just really wanted to go get cleaned up now. He and Felix said their goodbyes and left for the gym, Benji walking over with them.

When they reached the door to the locker room, Benji gave him a careful half-hug, and since there was hardly anyone else around, he leaned up quickly to kiss the uninjured side of Victor’s face. Felix went on inside ahead of them to give them a moment alone.

“Hey, you were pretty amazing back there,” Benji told him.

“What do you mean?” As far as Victor was aware, all he’d done was unintentionally put a lunch tray to good use.

“Even after everything Teddy did, you kept your cool and you didn’t let him get to you.”

Victor had mostly just been too stunned to really react to any of it at first, and then Andrew and the other guys had done such a great job of handling it that he hadn’t felt like he needed to step in until the end. It didn’t mean that he wasn’t feeling all of it now, though. Not just the physical pain from where he’d been hit, but everything else, too – the anger and the hurt that Teddy had tried once again to humiliate and degrade him in front of everyone. It was the injustice that stung most of all because Victor had never done anything to Teddy to deserve this kind of treatment; all he’d done was be himself.

“I don’t know if that’s true,” Victor admitted. “That he didn’t get to me, I mean. It’s just been, like, a month of this stuff already and I am so sick of it. If Andrew hadn’t jumped in there maybe I _would’ve_ lost my temper again…”

“Well, you _didn’t_ , and Andrew _did_ step up for you, because believe it or not we do have some allies. Things have been kind of intense since you came out, but aside from Teddy, it’s actually starting to get better now.” Victor frowned, and Benji caught it, saying, “No really, it is better. Most people aren’t like Teddy. Most of them don’t really care about us being gay anymore, and honestly, some people have even been really supportive and kind. Just try and stay focused on the good stuff, okay? As soon as we get this club started, we’ll make dealing with the homophobes and bullies at this school our number one priority.”

“Okay,” Victor agreed. There was no one else in the hallway except for a couple of girls who weren’t paying them any attention, so Victor gave Benji a quick kiss goodbye before heading into the locker room.

The next hour was spent getting cleaned up, visiting the nurse who examined Victor’s bruise before handing him an ice pack and some Ibuprofen for it, and finally meeting with Principal Meyers again. Ms. Albright was already there when Victor and Felix arrived in t-shirts and gym shorts, the only spare clothing they had available. She ushered them into the office where Meyers was waiting for them.

They both gave their accounts of what happened and when they’d finished Meyers said, somewhat impatiently, “Thank you for sharing that with me, boys. I already assigned Teddy another two detentions as punishment for his behavior today and-”

“That’s it?” Ms. Albright interrupted. “Just _detention_? For a hate crime?”

Meyers looked distinctly uncomfortable hearing that term, his thick brows furrowing as he said, “I don’t know if it’s reasonable to label a teenage prank a ‘hate crime’ of all things-”

“Let’s go ahead and call a spade a spade, shall we?” Ms. Albright cut in. “Teddy did what he did for no other reason than because of Victor’s sexuality. And when Victor and Benji Campbell came to me earlier this week to ask me to be the advisor for the GSA, they told me that they’ve both been the victims of bullying at school since coming out, as I discussed with you on Tuesday. It’s one of the main reasons they wanted to start their club in the first place, which is admirable, but we can’t just leave it to the students to try and make a safe space for themselves. We as the staff here need to start cracking down on homophobic behavior like this before it escalates any further than it already has.”

“ _Amen_ ,” Felix said, looking like he wanted to break into applause. He shrank back in his seat when Meyers shot him an irritated look.

“So what are you suggesting then? Suspension? That’ s not something that we take lightly here-”

“Well, this isn’t a situation that calls for a light punishment,” Ms. Albright argued. “I’d recommend a week’s suspension and mandatory sessions with the counselor after returning to school.”

Meyers got a look on his face like he’d just swallowed a lemon. He made a kind of ‘harumphing’ noise and said, “Fine. I’ll give it some consideration. Now I have another meeting to prepare for, and these boys have missed enough class time as it is…”

Just before they finally left the office, Ms. Albright paused in front of Meyers’ desk. “I’ll be taking that signed permission form to start the GSA club with me on my way out,” she said, raising her brows and staring pointedly at some of the paperwork on the side of the desk. “Just to save myself the trip back over here.”

Ms. Albright exited the office shortly after Victor and Felix, a triumphant smile on her face as she held up the signed forms.

“I’ll be seeing you at our first meeting next week, Victor.”

Victor couldn’t help feeling amazed at her tenacity. “Thank you so much for your support. Uh, how were you able to do all of that, though? I mean, he’s the principal…”

She winked and said conspiratorially, “Well, I just so happen to have some friends in high places… by which I mean that the superintendent is one of my BFF’s from college. I try not to push my luck with Meyers too much, but every now and then I just can’t help myself.”

Victor spent the evening at home that day, hanging out watching movies with his family and Felix, who had come over after dinner to help him out with his Valentine’s present for Benji. Isabel had predictably lost her mind when she saw the bruise on Victor’s face and heard about what had happened with Teddy and Kieran. Felix, trying to be helpful, had only made things worse when he’d clapped Victor on the shoulder and said, “Hey, at least Teddy is probably getting suspended, so you can get a break from the constant bullying for a little while.”

“What ‘constant bullying’?” Isabel repeated, her eyes narrowed dangerously. She turned to Victor with her arms crossed. “Has this kind of thing been happening a lot lately?”

Victor hesitated for a moment before nodding guiltily.

“You said you would tell me if anything happened. You _pr_ _o_ _mised_ me, Victor.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just been a lot of little things mostly.”

“ _Constant bullying_ does not sound like ‘a little thing’! _Dios mío_ _._ That’s it, I am showing up to that P. T. A. meeting next week and if they don’t agree to the anti-bullying training I am going on the freaking warpath. _Esta maldita escuela_ -”

“ _Mami_ , please, would you just calm down?” Victor begged.

Isabel did calm down eventually, but on Saturday morning as he was getting ready to leave for a shift at Brasstown, he overheard her talking on the phone about strategies for the P. T. A. meeting. It took him a few minutes of eavesdropping to figure out that the person on the other end of the line was most likely Amelia, and the thought of his and Benji’s moms storming the school next week was simultaneously touching and extremely embarrassing.

As he was headed for the door, Isabel called out, “ _Mijo_ , don’t forget that you guys are supposed to go to your dad’s tonight. I told him you were working, so you can just drive over there after you finish. He’s gonna text you the address later.”

“Wait, he wants me to come over there _tonight_?”

Isabel nodded. “Yeah. Why? What’s the problem?”

“ _Mami_ , it’s Valentine’s Day. I’m going out with Benji after work.”

“Oh. Well, I guess you can just go see your father tomorrow then. I’m sure if you talk to him about it he’ll understand.”

“Yeah, right,” Victor muttered, to which Isabel sighed heavily and said, “Just try, okay? Give him the benefit of the doubt here.”

Victor wasn’t in the mood to start his day off fighting with his dad, especially not right before a morning shift with Angie who remained one of his least favorite co-workers. He told himself that he’d just text his dad during his break later and let him know he wasn’t coming that evening, but then they got super busy in the cafe because of a large group that came in and placed their orders all at once. He ended up taking a rushed break that was much shorter than it should have been so that he could go help Angie out, and by the time the end of his shift arrived Victor had completely forgotten about texting his dad.

Benji arrived at Brasstown just a few minutes after Victor had clocked out, momentarily leaving Victor frozen and breathless in the doorway to the backroom. He felt his mouth go dry as he took in the sight of Benji in dark gray pants that were tight in all the best places, and a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up halfway and several buttons undone at the collar. His hair was a little looser than usual, the longer strands on the left side falling in a sweeping curve toward his eyes. Victor knew Benji had made big romantic plans for them, but looking at his boyfriend just then, Victor kind of wished they could just spend the evening somewhere private and skip the whole holiday date night thing.

“Victor.” Sarah’s annoyed voice coming from right behind him made him jump, and he turned to find her staring at him impatiently. “Go drool over your boyfriend elsewhere, some of us actually do work here.”

He stared back at her in shock, since they hadn’t actually disclosed their relationship status to her just yet. Sarah was capable of freaking out over a broken napkin dispenser, so Victor didn’t think it was unreasonable for them to be hesitant about telling her that her assistant manager was in a relationship with one her employees.

“ _Please_ ,” she said, rolling her eyes at him, “like it was some big secret.” It _had_ , in fact, been a big secret for two whole months, but Victor wasn’t going to point that out to her. She gave him the tiniest of smiles. “Now get out of here. Go have a nice evening with Benji. Ah, young love… you’ll find yourself middle-aged and divorced with too many cats before you know it, so enjoy yourselves while you can.”

“Um. Thanks. I guess.” She wasn’t losing her mind over them being a couple, so Victor decided to take that as a win and hurried away before she could say anything else awkward or disturbing. Benji was waiting for him near the door, and his smile lit up his entire face when Victor walked up to him. Victor swallowed hard and said, “Hey.”

“Hey,” Benji replied, eyes warm and beautiful and caught on Victor’s. “You ready to get out of here?”

Victor headed toward his truck automatically when they got to the parking lot, but Benji grabbed his hand and pulled him toward a familiar-looking white Camry. “Wait,” Victor said, “isn’t this your mom’s car?”

“It is,” Benji confirmed, pulling the key out of his pocket and unlocking the doors. To Victor’s amazement, Benji headed over to the driver’s side and climbed in. Victor got in a half-second later, staring at his boyfriend in confusion.

“What’s going on?”

“So… I actually got my license renewed two weeks ago.”

_“_ _Two weeks ago_ _?”_

“Well, I didn’t say anything because I wanted it to be part of the surprise tonight,” Benji explained, sounding a little shy about it. Victor cupped the side of his face and leaned over to kiss him, leaving Benji smiling and breathless a moment later.

“That’s so great,” Victor said. “Are you gonna get your own car?”

“My parents said I could get one later, if I save up the money for it myself and, uh… and if I can get a nine months sobriety chip. I’ve, um – I’ve still got about three months left to go on that, though.”

Victor could tell that it had been hard for Benji to tell him that. He reached over and took Benji’s hand in his. “That’s not too far away.”

“Yeah. Mum said I can borrow her car occasionally in the meantime, which is pretty exciting.”

“It’s _very_ exciting. So, where are we going tonight?”

“You’ll see,” Benji said mysteriously, but a few minutes later Victor was fairly certain he knew where they were headed.

“Uh, is the super secret location of our date _your house_?”

Benji flushed. “ _Part one_ might be at my house, yeah.”

‘Part one’ was definitely intriguing, but Victor didn’t try to ask since he was sure Benji wouldn’t tell him anything that would spoil the surprise. Benji pulled into the driveway of his own house a few minutes later, but instead of going inside he led Victor around to a gate that opened into the backyard.

The first thing Victor noticed was that the entire greenhouse was glowing with strings of golden lights which were strung up inside of it, bright in contrast to the overcast afternoon. The rest of the garden was a little bit damp and shadowy from the rainfall earlier, but just as beautiful as it always was. Victor followed Benji over the dewy path, stopping short when Benji pulled the door to the greenhouse open.

Inside, the small space had been transformed from the last time he’d seen it. One of the worktables had been placed in the center, with a white tablecloth spread out on top, and a set of plates and silverware. There were plants and candles all over the place, and a second later, Benji fished out his phone and then music began to play from a speaker in the corner.

“Whoah.”

Benji looked over at him a little nervously and asked, “Do you like it?”

“I mean, I _guess_ it’s all right,” Victor said playfully. He shook his head and told him, “This is one of the most amazing things anyone’s ever done for me.”

Benji instantly relaxed, a pleased smile spreading over his face just before he pulled Victor down for a kiss. Victor wrapped his arms around Benji’s waist and tugged him closer, leaning back against the door frame to keep his balance as the kiss Benji had initiated quickly turned into making out. Victor had kind of been expecting some fancy restaurant that night, but this was so much better. Just him and Benji and the quiet of the garden, nothing to stop them from kissing long and slow against the side of the greenhouse before dinner if that’s what they wanted to do.

They spent the following hour eating and talking and sometimes trying to kiss over the table, which was just a little too wide to make that an easy thing to do. The food Benji had made was amazing, and the music he had playing in the background was perfect, and Benji continued to look distractingly gorgeous the entire time. There was nowhere else Victor would rather be and nothing else on his mind except for Benji. All the bullshit from the day before was long gone, and if it weren’t for the slight ache in his jaw, it would have felt like it had never happened at all.

After dinner and an impressive chocolate soufflé for dessert, they headed into the house. Mike and Amelia were apparently out on their own date that evening, which meant Benji and Victor had the place to themselves. He helped Benji with the dishes, and once that was done, Benji took him by the hand and led him into his bedroom.

They had been tangled up on top of the bed making out for awhile when Benji pulled back to catch his breath and said, a bit hesitantly, “Uh, if you want to, I was thinking maybe we could take things farther tonight. But only if you feel ready for that, obviously. It’s totally cool if you don’t want to. I’m fine with going at your pace, so there’s no pressure or anything…”

While Benji was rambling, Victor very nearly blurted out ‘farther how’, but fortunately his brain had quickly supplied him with the most likely answer to that question before he could embarrass himself. He was still getting used to sex, and how to talk about it out loud with another human being, and for a few seconds he sort of just froze there staring up at Benji completely incapable of forming a coherent response to his suggestion.

Benji’s cheeks went red. “Sorry, we don’t have to-”

“I, uh – no-” Victor rushed to say, trying to figure out how to put words together again.

“I didn’t mean to, like, rush you or something. What we’ve been doing is great and-”

“No, I – Benji, I, uh, I wanna do that, too.”

“Oh.” A relieved smile spread across Benji’s face. “Okay. Awesome.”

“But, um… Would I, or would you, uh…” Victor tried to swallow down his embarrassment. If they were going to do this, they had to be on the same page about it, which meant actually talking. With words. _Come on, Victor, you can do this._ “Which one of us would be, uh…” His mind went completely blank, and somehow what came out was, “…the, like, ‘power forward’ in this situation?”

Benji stared at him blankly. “The what?”

Oh god, why had he phrased it like that? There were actual terms for this stuff, and he had researched it and he knew what they were, but it was still too awkward to say, and now he was never going to live this down.

“Wait, that’s, like, a basketball thing, isn’t it?” Benji asked, and then started laughing. “Did you seriously just use a _sports analogy_ to ask me which one of us would top?”

Victor grabbed the pillow out from under his head and buried his face in it, hoping that if he didn’t succeed in smothering himself he’d at least be spared the pain of looking Benji in the eye. Benji heartlessly tore it away from him, though, and there was so much affection in the way he was gazing down at Victor that Victor finally found himself laughing, too. Just like that all the discomfort and embarrassment didn’t matter anymore because this was _Benji_ , and when Benji leaned down to kiss him he knew exactly what Benji was communicating even without hearing the words themselves.

Victor did manage to stumble through some actual communication using his actual words after that, and it turned out that talking about what he wanted, _hearing what Benji wanted,_ was surprisingly hot. It added a layer of anticipation to what they were going to do that made the whole thing even more exciting. But more than that, it made him realize just how deeply he trusted Benji, and how much Benji trusted him in return.

Sometime later, when Victor was propped up against Benji’s pillows and feeling very, _very_ good about the way the evening had been going so far, Benji lifted his head a little from Victor’s chest and then slumped lazily back down again.

“What time is it? I can’t see the clock from here.”

From the angle he was lying at, he couldn’t quite see it either without displacing Benji, and he liked having Benji exactly where he was. Instead he reached down and grabbed his jeans off the floor, fishing his phone out of the pocket. One look at the screen revealed that he had a bunch of unread texts and missed calls, all from his parents.

“Shit,” Victor swore, unlocking the phone.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s my dad. I totally forgot to tell him that I’m not going over to his place tonight and judging by these text messages he’s pretty pissed about it. Oh, and it’s almost eight now.”

Much to Victor’s disappointment, Benji pulled away from him and sat up in bed, running a hand through his hair. It continued to fall messily around his face, so Victor reached out and tucked a strand of it behind his ear. If his hand lingered a little on the curve of Benji’s neck and shoulder, well… he was only human.

“Is everything going to be okay if you don’t go see him tonight?”

“It’s fine,” Victor said, more confidently than he felt. He could just make it up to his dad by going over there the next day, and maybe bringing some kind of peace offering, like those _p_ _asteles_ _de gloria_ that his dad liked so much from the _panadería_ in town.

“All right, well, go ahead and call him now if you need to. I’m just gonna take a quick shower before we leave for part two of the date.”

“Wait, we have to go _out_ somewhere now?” Victor asked in alarm. He’d really been enjoying the part of the Valentine’s Day celebrations that they were currently in the middle of and the thought of Benji putting clothes on again was pretty upsetting.

Benji laughed, leaning down to kiss Victor before he walked over to his closet. “It’ll be worth it, I promise.”

While Benji was showering, Victor chickened out of calling Armando and just sent him a text instead.

_Hey Papi sorry I forgot to tell you I can’t come tonight. I’m out with Benji right now. I’ll come see the new place tomorrow instead. Thanks for sending the address earlier_

After Victor had also showered and gotten dressed again, they climbed back into Amelia’s car and headed out of town. Benji tried to keep his phone angled away from Victor so their destination would remain a surprise, but it was impossible to miss the directions that were definitely leading them toward Dallas.

They ended up parking in a trendy nightlife area just slightly outside of the city, where most of the restaurants had crowded open air patios and the trees lining the pedestrian street were all lit up with soft white lights.

“I really don’t think I can eat anything else,” Victor joked as they got out of the car and began walking by one overflowing restaurant after another. There was a festive vibe to the atmosphere, with Valentine’s decorations all over the place and vendors wandering around selling bunches of roses.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t bring you here for food.” Benji threaded his fingers through Victor’s, and although he was nervous at first, he forced himself to relax. He was slowly starting to get used to this feeling – to being out in public. To other people seeing them as a couple and it not really being a big deal anymore. No one seemed to care, and as Victor looked around he even noticed what he thought were probably some other same-sex couples out on dates.

Benji led him away from the noise and bright lights of the busy food street toward a bridge with a large white arc standing tall over the middle of it. Support cables twisted down from the arc in a kind of spiral, standing out brightly against the night sky, and as they walked over the pedestrian side of the bridge, the Dallas skyline slowly came into view. The walkway was wide, with flower boxes and benches all along it, most of which were currently occupied by other couples. The crowd started to get thicker at the center of the bridge, but Benji managed to find a vacant space for them near the railing and pulled Victor to a stop there.

“Is something happening tonight?” Victor asked, looking around at the other spectators, most of whom were staring off toward the city expectantly.

“You’ll see in about…” he checked his phone, “…five minutes.”

Victor reached into his coat pocket, and removed a small package. “While we’re waiting… this is for you.”

Benji took the gift and opened it, revealing a box filled with rows of various kinds of chocolates nestled within some pink tissue paper. There were even a few experimental ones in the shapes of animals, like a little white chocolate hedgehog and something that was meant to be a raccoon but unfortunately came out looking more like a opossum instead. “Victor, did you make these?”

He nodded. “I may have had a little help from Felix, though.”

“Very impressive,” Benji said, and leaned up to kiss him. Victor kissed him back and didn’t let himself care about who might see them.

They were interrupted a short while later by a loud booming sound in the distance, and then the sky was suddenly lit up with deep red and sparkling white fireworks. As the show began, Victor wrapped an arm around Benji’s shoulders and drew him in close to his side.

“Best boyfriend ever,” Victor told him, and felt impossibly grateful for the perfect night Benji had given him.

Victor just barely made it home before curfew. Benji had driven him to Brasstown to pick up the truck, and they may have gotten _a little distracted_ making out in the car and lost track of the time.

“Cutting it close there, aren’t we,” Isabel said, one brow raised as he crept in the door. The time on the clock said eleven fifty-seven.

“I am technically on time, though,” Victor pointed out.

Isabel narrowed her eyes at him. “Yeah, and you also have a bruise on your neck that I’m assuming you didn’t get at school yesterday.”

Victor’s hand flew up to his neck, but he had no idea where the hickey Isabel was referring to was actually located, and anyway the damage was already done. He felt his face heating up like it had just been lit on fire.

Isabel shook her head in amused exasperation. “I hope you had a good night, at least. Considering that you completely upset your father today by not calling him to explain what you were doing like I asked you to.”

“I’m sorry. I just got distracted at work…”

“And then even more distracted with Benji from the looks of it.” She sighed. “You’re gonna have to do some apologizing tomorrow, though. I think you really hurt his feelings.”

Victor nodded obediently. “Okay, _Mami_. I’m gonna go to bed now. Good night.”

Before he could leave the room, she said, “Victor, hold on a minute. I, um, I just wanted to say… I am really glad that you have someone now who makes you so happy. You’ve been different, this past month. Like this huge weight has been lifted off your shoulders. I can’t believe I never realized before how much you were carrying around with you, but I can see the difference now, and it’s nice to have you looking so much… lighter.”

The truth was, it wasn’t just him. In the weeks since Armando had moved out, Isabel had slowly been changing into a different person, too. More like the way she had been when he was a little kid, more confident and carefree and ready to laugh. It wasn’t that the separation was easy for her, because he knew it wasn’t, but he could tell that it was a relief. He smiled and told her, “You seem lighter these days, too.”

The smile she gave him in return only served to illustrate his point. “Good night, _mi amor_.”

On Sunday morning, Victor didn’t just pick up the _pasteles de gloria_ at the _panadería_ on his way out of town _._ He got all kinds of other stuff as well, and ended up with nearly three boxes worth of different pastries, which hopefully would be enough to get his dad to forgive him for his slip up the previous day. It had _better_ be enough, considering he’d dropped nearly thirty bucks on it. The extra ammunition seemed necessary, though, since Armando had never replied to Victor’s apology text, which didn’t bode well.

Armando’s new apartment was in a town located halfway between Brandon and Southlake, the upper class suburb where Armando worked now. His place was on the ground floor of a reasonably nice-looking three story building, part of a larger complex that surrounded a central swimming pool and garden. Victor had to take a deep breath before knocking on the door; not only was he worried about Armando being angry with him, the fact that he was here, standing in front of a building where his father now lived, was hitting him harder than he expected. It made the reality of his parents’ separation that much more concrete. This wasn’t just some temporary situation like when Armando went to stay at Tio Nicolas’ house after Thanksgiving. This felt far more serious, and far more permanent.

It ended up being Adrian who answered the door. He was still in his pajamas since it was only about nine in the morning, and he was bouncing around in excitement for some reason.

“Victor, you’re here! _Papi_ made us french toast! With strawberries and powdered sugar!”

Well, that explained all the bouncing then. “Wow, that sounds great,” Victor said, as he toed off his shoes and closed the door behind himself. There was a narrow hallway before him that opened up into a living room, with two doors on each side of it. One of them was a bathroom, and the other three were bedrooms. All the walls were white and blank, and each room was furnished with just the bare necessities, including the living room where there was only a single couch and a camp chair facing a modestly-sized TV. A sliding glass door led out to the patio, and to the right of the living room were the kitchen and dining area. Pilar was sitting at a table that looked like it had seen better days, hunched over her phone, and Armando was busy in the kitchen.

“ _Buenos, Papi,_ ” Victor said, placing the stack of boxes down on the narrow kitchen counter. “I come bearing baked goods. I hope you guys aren’t too full already on french toast.”

“Yay!” Adrian squealed, immediately popping open the boxes to inspect their contents.

“Morning,” Armando said, glancing at Victor briefly over his shoulder before turning back to the stove as he spoke. “There’s some toast and eggs if you want it, and coffee over there.”

“Thanks,” Victor said. He stood awkwardly in the middle of the kitchen for a moment. “Uh… where do you keep the mugs?”

“Cupboard to the left of the sink,” Armando answered.

Victor opened it to find a small collection of unfamiliar mugs and glasses. He couldn’t help wondering where all of this stuff had come from, if Armando had gone to a thrift store or gotten some donations from family, or if he’d just bought a bunch of new stuff at Target or Walmart or something. It was so strange to think of his dad living _here_ , in this half empty apartment, all by himself.

As he was pouring himself some coffee he said, “Uh, sorry again about last night. I meant to text you, I just had a really busy day and it slipped my mind.”

“I was really worried about you.” Armando continued to stare down at the toast he was grilling, keeping his back to Victor. His hunched shoulders and the low tone of his voice gave away how angry he was.

“I’m really sorry. I just forgot, I swear.”

Armando flipped the bread and set the spatula down with a loud clatter. He turned around finally, arms folded over his chest, looking over at Victor from under furrowed brows. “When I didn’t hear from you for a while I kept thinking that something had happened to you. Like you’d gotten into a car accident, or something had happened at work, or whatever. Your mom was busy and couldn’t call me back right away either.”

“I’m sorry-” Victor began, but Armando cut in impatiently.

“I made lasagna last night. From scratch. First time I’ve tried to do that in years, but I wanted to do something nice for you guys so you’d feel welcome here. I went out and got ice cream and snacks and stuff, too. I hardly ever get to see you guys now, and then – and then you couldn’t even be bothered to tell me you weren’t coming.”

Victor hung his head guiltily. “Look, I… I guess I just put off messaging you because you always get so tense when I talk about Benji, and I was nervous about telling you that we were going out last night. And then things really did get busy, and I just forgot. I won’t let it happen again. I promise.”

As if to prove Victor’s point, Armando’s jaw clenched at the mention of Benji’s name. He was quiet for a long moment, like he was struggling to keep himself calm, and then eventually said, “Fine. Let’s just try to have a nice breakfast.”

Victor filled up a plate with some of the eggs and french toast, and went to sit at the table with his siblings. It was hard to have much of an appetite, though, after the conversation he’d just had.

“Have fun last night?” Pilar asked. Her eyes caught on the side of Victor’s neck and her smile turned into a smirk. “It sure looks like you did.”

Armando was headed back into the room to join them, so Victor shot his sister a warning glare and tried to tug the hood of his sweatshirt a little tighter around his neck. He’d actually dipped into Pilar’s make up before leaving the house that morning, but he obviously hadn’t done a very good job if she’d already spotted the hickey. Thank god his dad hadn’t seemed to have noticed it yet.

A few minutes later, Armando focused in on him with narrowed eyes, making Victor’s heart stop for a moment before Armando asked, “What happened to your face?” and he realized it was actually the bruise on his jaw that his father was staring at.

“Uh, didn’t _Mami_ tell you about what happened on Friday?”

“She told me there was another bullying incident. Something about a water balloon getting thrown at you in the cafeteria but hitting Felix instead. She said I should ask you about the details,” Armando explained.

Victor didn’t really want to get into it in front of his little brother. He nodded slightly toward Adrian and said, “I’ll tell you later.”

“So where did you and Benji go last night?” Pilar asked, clearly unable to leave well enough alone. Armando’s expression soured the way it always did when the topic of Benji came up.

“Did you guys go on a date? Miles in my class said that on Valentine’s Day boys have to give their girlfriends chocolates and roses and stuff if they want the girls to kiss them. Miles gave Ashley a flower at recess, and it wasn’t a rose, but she kissed him anyway and it was really gross,” Adrian rattled off, fast enough to give them all whiplash. Clearly he’d been given way too much sugar already that morning, and Victor’s three boxes of pastries were definitely not helping. “But you and Benji are boys. So do you both have to give flowers?”

Pilar stifled a laugh behind her hand, her eyes lit up with amusement. From the other end of the table an extremely loud silence was emanating from their father. But Victor was tired of dancing around this stuff and always playing things safe with his dad. He knew that maybe today wasn’t the best time to push things, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to just ignore Adrian’s question.

“Uh, actually, neither of us bought any flowers. I did make Benji some chocolates, though. Remember? Felix helped me make them when he came over on Friday night.”

“Did he kiss you when you gave him the chocolates?” Adrian asked, wrinkling his nose. Lately he seemed to be equally disgusted and fascinated by the idea of kissing.

Armando had clearly reached his limit at that point. “Adrian, that’s enough. Go brush your teeth and get dressed. After that maybe we can play a game or something.”

Excited by the prospect of a board game, Adrian hurried away to do as he was asked. As soon as he was gone Victor looked at his father defiantly and said, “He _did_ kiss me. When I gave him the chocolates last night. I kissed him, too.”

“ _Victor_ ,” Armando warned, but Victor ignored him.

“ _No_. I’m tired of you being all tense and weird every time I talk about Benji or I say anything remotely related to being gay. You told me you were going to do better. But pretending like me coming out never happened isn’t actually doing better, Dad.”

“No one else has a problem with Victor being gay. Not me, or Adrian, or Mom… it’s just you. Why can’t you accept him, too?” Pilar asked.

Armando burst out, loud and upset enough to make them both jump a little in surprise. “If no one else has a problem with it, then why is he getting bullied at school? Why does he have a bruise on his face that he can’t even explain to me with his little brother in the room?”

“It’s mostly just one guy,” Victor admitted. “Teddy Anderson. He’s the one that wrote the graffiti on my locker last month, and he tried to throw that water balloon at me in the cafeteria on Friday. When it missed he got angry because everyone was laughing at him, and then he hit me. But most people aren’t like him. Most of my other classmates have gotten used to me and Benji being out now, and a lot of them have been really accepting.”

Armando shook his head, his voice so much quieter as he said, “This isn’t the life I wanted for you.”

For a moment Victor felt himself getting frustrated and impatient again. He didn’t want to hear about how much his dad wanted him to try dating girls until he miraculously found one that could turn him straight, all so he could live some so-called normal life. He opened his mouth, ready to snap, and then stopped abruptly when he realized that the tense lines of his father’s face looked more like fear than anger.

This time his father wasn’t simply uncomfortable. Armando was _scared_ for him.

“It’s just a bruise, _Papi_. He didn’t really hit me that hard,” Victor said softly, surprised when Armando’s shoulders slumped and he pressed a hand to his eyes. His father’s tears always came like one of those flash floods in the spring, the kind that just appeared out of nowhere and with zero warning.

“I don’t want you to be someone that other people hate,” Armando said, voice rough and pleading. “How can you be happy when there are people out there that are going to try and hurt you because of this?”

“There are men out there who like to hurt women,” Pilar pointed out, her voice gentle despite the gravity of the words. “Do you think I’ll never be able to live a happy life just because there are some bad guys in the world that might try to hurt me?”

Armando breathed heavily, trying to get his emotions back under control. He didn’t seem to be able to form a response to that.

“Even though there are bad guys out there, I can’t just stop being a girl, and even though there are some homophobic assholes at school like Teddy, Victor can’t stop being gay. We all just are what we are. If you ask him to try and hide it or change it, all that’s going to do is make him miserable, like he was before.”

Scrubbing at the tears on his face, Armando pulled his hand away and looked at Victor, running his gaze over him as if he were looking for some visible evidence of Victor’s unhappiness. Like maybe all that time being confused and closeted might have left a mark somehow. There were definitely days when Victor felt like it had. “You never seemed miserable.”

Victor glanced at Pilar, surprised by the depth of the sympathy he found in her eyes. Before coming out, he’d always worked so hard to maintain his mask, to convince everyone that he was the strong, reliable, _happy_ person that they’d wanted him to be. He wondered now if maybe Pilar had been able to see past it at times to the loneliness that had been buried underneath it all.

“The last two or three years were hard for me… I guess I was pretty unhappy a lot of the time. I just tried not to let anyone see it.”

The admission made Armando’s eyes shine, like he was dangerously close to crying again. Victor hurried to continue, saying, “I am happy now, though. I’ve had to deal with a lot of crap since I came out-” Victor tactfully didn’t mention that a significant portion of that crap had been due to Armando himself, “-but I really am so much happier than I’ve ever been before. Because I get to be myself now, and I can finally be honest with you guys, which was all I ever wanted. And, uh… and because of Benji. Because he-” Victor had to pause and swallow past the sudden dryness in his throat. “Because he loves me, and I love him, too.”

The quiet that followed was more pensive than it was tense. Victor could see that his father was processing all that had been said, and the only thing Victor could do now was wait and hope that it was enough. After a while, Armando looked up again, and it seemed like he was going to say something, but before he could Adrian came bounding back into the room.

“I wanna play Throw Throw Burrito!” Adrian announced, already fully dressed and carrying the box. He took in the three of them still sitting just where he’d left them at the table, which was still covered in the remains of breakfast, and looked immediately annoyed. “Why aren’t you guys ready? I brushed my teeth and everything.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Armando mumbled, getting up quickly from his seat. He grabbed as much stuff as he could from the table and disappeared into the kitchen with it.

Pilar caught Victor’s eye. “You okay?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Thanks. For saying all of that.”

They played Adrian’s burrito game, which involved a lot of running around throwing things at each other, and Victor was glad that he’d been too distracted to eat much earlier because it wasn’t something he’d want to do on a full stomach. That was followed by Clue, and then a trip out to the small playground at the center of the apartment complex where Adrian raced around with a couple of other little kids until he finally looked like his sugar high was starting to wear off.

As they were sitting down for lunch later that day, Adrian now looking like he was about to fall asleep in his tomato soup, Armando casually asked, “So, uh… where did you and Benji go last night?”

Victor froze with his grilled cheese sandwich halfway to his mouth, staring at his father in shock. He glanced quickly at Pilar, to confirm that this was actually happening, and she seemed equally surprised.

“Um. He cooked dinner for me at his house,” Victor said, slow and cautious, watching for any sign that his dad was about to freak out again, but Armando’s face remained determinedly neutral, “and then we drove down to Dallas to see some fireworks.”

“Dinner and a show, huh. Sounds like a nice evening.”

“Yeah,” Victor agreed, “it was really nice.”

Armando didn’t say anything else about it, but it was a start. Victor’s heart swelled with hope, and he felt lighter than he had in a very long time.


	40. (Un)safe Spaces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: homophobia, use of homophobic slurs, bullying, mild description of/threats of violence
> 
> My heart goes out to everyone down in Texas. Hope things start getting better for you guys soon <3

There was a nasty surprise waiting for Victor when he went back to school on Monday. He’d been standing next to his locker before first period, laughing at something Felix had just said, when he glanced down the hallway and caught sight of Teddy walking toward them. The second their eyes met, Teddy smirked, and Victor’s laughter died in his throat.

Coming to a stop right in front of Victor, Teddy drawled in badly accented Spanish, “Bue-nohs dee-uhs, mary-cone.”

It was so mockingly mispronounced that Victor couldn’t even figure out what the last word was supposed to be.

“What did you just say?” he demanded. A familiar rush of adrenaline began coursing through him as he became instantly ready for another fight. He leaned forward into Teddy’s space, heart pounding a furious rhythm, but Teddy just took a step back, looking pleased with the reaction he’d gotten.

“Mary-cone,” he repeated slowly and deliberately, with an overly casual shrug as he continued to back away. “Isn’t that how you say it?”

That was when it clicked. Mary-cone. _Maricó_ _n._

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Victor snapped and lunged forward, but he was immediately held back by Felix’s hands on his shoulders. Teddy just laughed at him and walked off into the crowd.

“So now he’s adding some good old-fashioned racism to his repertoire. Classy,” Felix muttered darkly. Once Teddy had disappeared from sight, he let go of his hold on Victor. “What the hell is he even doing here? I thought he was suspended.”

Victor grabbed the book he needed and slammed the door of his locker hard enough to leave the metal shaking. “Yeah. So did I.”

By fourth period, Victor had managed to find out from one of his teammates that Teddy’s parents, who apparently poured a lot of money into the football and basketball programs at school, had kicked up a big fuss about his suspension, which was why Principal Meyers had backed off and only given Teddy detention instead. He was in the middle of explaining this to his friends at lunch when the second surprise of the day showed up in the form of Andrew, Tristan, and Nate (another one of Victor’s teammates.)

“It’s pretty hard to refuse anything to the people that just dropped ten grand last year on the football team alone,” Andrew commented. He and the other two guys were holding trays of food, and were hovering expectantly near the table where Victor was sitting with his friends. An unusually hesitant expression crossed Andrew’s face as he asked, “Mind if we join you?”

Everyone was too shocked to respond to the request, and Andrew was staring at Mia anyway, like it was her permission that mattered most, so the rest of them waited to see what she had to say.

“Uh, yeah, sure. If you want to,” Mia said, flicking her gaze up at Andrew quickly and then back down at the table. She had used to look at Victor in that shy way last fall, and it was odd now to see it directed at someone else. Or maybe not so much odd as it was endearing, Victor realized, trying hard not to smile.

Andrew, Tristan, and Nate barely managed to squeeze themselves into the remaining spaces available at the table, which was definitely at maximum capacity now with a total of ten people crowded around it. Victor had been in between Mia and Benji again, but he scooted closer to his boyfriend to let Andrew take the spot next to him, and Andrew shot him a grateful look in return. Everyone else in the cafeteria was staring at them, but this time it seemed to be less about Victor and Benji and more about the fact that some of the most popular kids at school were now choosing to sit with all of them.

Victor wasn’t the only one to notice the attention they were attracting. Feña surveyed the room around them and noted dryly, “I think you guys just broke every law of high school social stratification by coming over here.”

“What are you talking about?” Andrew asked blankly. He was probably so used to people adoringly watching his every move that he wasn’t even fully aware of the phenomenon anymore.

Felix shook his head incredulously at how oblivious Andrew was. “Jocks and nerds breaking bread together in the cafeteria? Pretty sure that means the end of times is nigh.”

“It’s just lunch,” Andrew said, rolling his eyes, “but if me eating chicken fingers two feet away from you somehow brings about the apocalypse, you have my sincerest apologies, Weston.”

“It’s Felix, actually. Not Weston. I mean, come _on_. Don’t you think calling people by their last names makes it sound like we’re at some stuffy English boarding school?” Felix’s half-joking tone suddenly grew more serious. “It’s not Lone Stone, either.”

Andrew’s eyes met Felix’s steadily, and he nodded in acknowledgment. “You got it. Felix.”

“So, is that true? Did Teddy’s parents really put ten grand into the football team?” Benji asked, in the slightly awkward pause that followed Felix and Andrew’s exchange.

“Yep. And he probably dropped even more on those gym renovations last summer,” Tristan confirmed. He looked a little envious as he said, “His dad’s in the oil industry. They’re totally loaded.”

“Yeah, man, did you see the car Teddy’s dad got him when he turned sixteen?” Nate asked Victor. “It’s a freaking Benz, dude. I heard he took it away when Teddy got kicked off the basketball team, though. That’s probably half the reason he’s been such a piece of shit recently.”

“The other half is just his innate preference for being a total jackass,” Andrew added.

Victor remembered Teddy’s smug face as he’d walked away from him earlier that morning, and felt his blood boil yet again. On the far side of the room, he could see Teddy and Kieran eating with their usual group of friends, talking and laughing like they’d never done anything wrong.

“That’s so messed up. He should have been suspended for what he did on Friday,” Mia said. “He’s just going to get worse, now that he knows he can get away with it.”

Teddy’s eyes locked on Victor’s from across the room, a dark look crossing the other boy’s face, and Victor couldn’t help but worry that Mia might be right about that.

After school let out that day, Victor, Benji, Felix, and Pilar walked over to the theater building together for the first GSA meeting. Since Ms. Albright was their advisor, she’d agreed to let them meet there on days when the Drama Club wasn’t using the space.

“Willkommen and bienvenue!” Ms. Albright called out cheerfully when she saw them. She, Maggie, and another girl were up on the stage, arranging some chairs in a circle. Ms. Albright shook her head at the blank looks she was getting from everyone but Felix. “Cabaret, anyone?”

“Such a great film,” Felix enthused.

“I still haven’t gotten around to watching it,” Benji admitted, as Victor said, “Cabaret? What’s that?”

Ms. Albright sighed. “And _this_ is the next generation of queer youth. My heart despairs.”

“Hey,” Maggie said, greeting them. “Hi, Pilar.”

“Oh, hey, Maggie. I didn’t know you were coming to this.”

Maggie smiled a little nervously. “Yep. I’m, uh, still not really out to everyone yet.”

“That’s cool, I won’t say anything,” Pilar reassured her.

“Where do you want these?” Anthony asked, suddenly appearing from backstage with a stack of chairs in his arms. He froze as he spotted them, his gaze caught on Pilar. When Victor glanced over at his sister, she was staring right back at Anthony in shock.

“You!” she said, her expression caught somewhere between confusion and anger. “What are _you_ doing here?”

“The same thing you are. Attending the GSA meeting.” Anthony’s mouth tightened in exasperation. “Look, I _tried_ to tell you I wasn’t homophobic, but you left before I could explain anything.”

Victor looked between them in surprise. “You two know each other?”

“Whatever,” Pilar said to Anthony, ignoring Victor’s question and going to sit down in one of the chairs. She kept shooting unsettled glances at Anthony, like he was some puzzle that she couldn’t quite figure out.

“Well, nothing like a dramatic entrance to kick things off,” Ms. Albright joked. She helped Anthony add a few more chairs to the circle and then everyone sat down. So far there was just Victor’s group plus Anthony, Maggie, and one other girl that Victor assumed was another freshman. She had curly brown hair, glasses, and a band t-shirt that looked a lot like something Benji would wear, paired with skinny jeans and Converse.

“So, I’m not always going to attend these meetings, but I wanted to be here for the first one just in case you needed my help with anything. This club is all about you guys. My role as advisor is to sign off on paperwork and provide my pearls of wisdom as needed. I’m also available in case you ever want to organize something like a trip or an event,” Ms. Albright explained. “With that said, I leave the rest to you.”

There was a brief pause as they all looked around at each other, and then Benji spoke up. “Well, I guess I’ll get things started then. I’ve been doing some research and reading the stuff that Dani gave us about how to run one of these, and I think there are some basic ground rules we should lay down first to make sure that this will be a safe space. After that, maybe we can all share what we’re hoping to get out of this club.”

Everyone nodded in agreement, so Benji continued, saying, “Okay, so, the first rule of the GSA is-”

“Don’t talk about the GSA?” Maggie joked, breaking the slightly awkward atmosphere in the room.

Benji rolled his eyes, but he smiled as he said, “-don’t _make assumptions_ in the GSA. Basically, we’re used to assuming things about other people’s gender or sexuality because that’s the society we’ve grown up in, but here we need to make an extra effort not to do that. Unless someone tells you how they identify, don’t assume you already know. I was thinking that whenever we have new people join the group, we could start off by introducing ourselves and sharing our pronouns. You can say whatever else you want about yourself then, too.”

“Okay, why don’t we try that now, and then continue with the ground rules?” Anthony suggested. He looked around at everyone cautiously before he continued. “I’m Anthony Russo. My pronouns are he/him, and… uh, I’m trans. I also identify as straight. I’m not out to anyone who isn’t here right now, though, so please don’t mention it outside of this group.”

Victor probably wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t been sitting right next to her, but Pilar stiffened a little when Anthony introduced himself. He looked over at his sister questioningly, but she just continued to ignore him, her wide eyes trained on Anthony.

They went around the room continuing with the introductions. Victor was a little curious what Pilar might say, but wasn’t too surprised when she told everyone she was straight and preferred she/her pronouns. It was kind of nice to hear, though, all the same. It made Victor feel like things were more equal between them, now that Pilar had also chosen to come out, and it made him wish that it wasn’t just taken for granted that coming out was something only queer people had to do.

When it came time for the new girl to share, she said, “Hey guys. I’m Cora Martin, she/her, and I – I’m, um.” She looked nervously over at Maggie, who gave her an encouraging smile and laced their hands together. Cora drew in a steadying breath before saying, “And I’m gay.”

It was obvious that Cora hadn’t said the words out loud very often before this, and there was a sympathetic ache in Victor’s chest at the fear he recognized in Cora’s eyes. She’d overcome that fear and been brave enough to tell all of them, and seeing that made him feel so good about what they were doing there that day. Somehow, despite all the crap they had to put up with at school, this little group of them were beginning to make a space for themselves where it was okay to just be whoever they were for a little while without having to worry about being judged or teased or bullied.

After the introductions were finished, Benji told them about some of the other rules for the group, mostly related to being respectful of one another and guarding each other’s privacy. It was really cool to see Benji stepping up as the de facto leader of the club, at least for now, and it made sense for him to be the one to do it. Not only because starting the group had been Benji’s idea in the first place, but also because they wouldn’t all be in this room together if it wasn’t for Benji having had the strength to come out even in a new school where he hadn’t known anyone yet. Watching Benji speak, seeing how confident he was – well, it was really hot for one thing, but also – it left Victor feeling incredibly proud that _this was his boyfriend_.

“All right, so now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, we should figure out what we actually want to do with this club. Like, what are you guys hoping to get from it?” Benji asked.

There was a brief pause while everyone considered the question, and then Anthony said, “Just… somewhere that I can feel safe being out at school.”

Cora and Maggie nodded in agreement. Cora added quietly, “Somewhere that we can talk to other people who are like us.”

“Maybe we can spend some time each week just talking about whatever stuff we’re all dealing with,” Victor suggested, thinking about everything he’d gone through in the past six months and how much he had needed to talk with Simon about it. “Stuff like coming out, or figuring out who you are, or dealing with bullying, or whatever.”

“That’s a good idea,” Benji said, giving Victor a smile. “And bullying is something that I’ve been wanting to work on. Being out here is a lot harder than it was for me back at my old school, and I think that the staff’s lack of training is a big part of that. So… uh, my mom and Victor’s are planning on bringing this issue up with the P. T. A. on Thursday night. If you’re comfortable talking to your parents about it, you guys should encourage them to come to the meeting and support the request for diversity and anti-bullying training for the school staff. I’m actually going to talk at the P. T. A. meeting about my experiences with homophobia here, and if any of you feel like you want to join me in speaking about it you can, although I get that that’s a pretty hard thing to do.”

“I’ll think about it,” Maggie said, “but even if I’m not ready to give a big, public speech, I’ll be there and I’ll ask my parents to vote for the training.”

The others agreed that they would talk to their parents as well, even Felix, although he didn’t look very confident about the chances of getting his mom out of the house.

“Y’all should consider talking with your friends and allies, too. See if they can get their parents to vote for the training. The more support you can muster up the better, ‘cause I’m pretty sure this is gonna be a hard sell,” Ms. Albright said wearily. “If you couldn’t already tell by the shabby state of this theater, sports take top priority over everything else here at Brandon High School.”

“As if we didn’t already know that from Teddy Anderson’s continued existence here,” Pilar muttered. She’d been furious when Victor explained to her earlier why Teddy hadn’t been suspended. “I’ll definitely talk to my friends about the P. T. A. thing.”

“On a separate note,” Ms. Albright said, “I just thought I’d mention that this group doesn’t have to be all business. It’s great that you wanna make things better here, but don’t forget that you can use this time to socialize, too. You do get allocated a certain amount of funds from the school as an official club, so if you ever want to just do something fun we can totally make that happen.”

“Hey, we could all go to that Queer Film Festival at Brandon College at the end of the month,” Benji suggested. “Dani said there was a cover fee of ten bucks per person, but maybe the club could take care of that?”

“Hell yes we can do that,” Ms. Albright confirmed. “And then maybe the next time someone quotes a queer film classic at you y’all won’t embarrass yourselves like you just did.”

Everyone else agreed that the film festival sounded like fun, and then they talked about some other things they could potentially do as a group, and decided to celebrate the official start of the club by ordering food for their meeting next week.

“So what are we thinking?” Ms. Albright asked them.

“Ooh, I heard that a new Korean barbecue place just opened up in town,” Felix said, his face lighting up with enthusiasm. “And apparently they do these bulgogi lunch sets-”

“Or maybe sushi?” Maggie cut in. “I don’t eat beef or pork.”

“I’m not into raw fish,” Anthony said, wrinkling his nose. “What about Mexican?”

“Whoah, whoah, slow your roll, kiddos. When I said we had some money I meant we had some, like, pizza or McDonald’s money, not sushi and whatever the heck Felix was talking about,” Ms. Albright interrupted before the argument could continue. They all settled on pizza and with that the first meeting came to an end.

Everyone helped tidy away the chairs, and then Benji needed to talk to Ms. Albright about something, so Victor and Felix ended up chatting with Maggie and Cora while they waited.

“I, uh, I wanted to say that it was really awesome of you to come out at school,” Cora told Victor. “Today was kind of the first time I told anyone besides Maggie, and honestly I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it. I almost chickened out of coming to the meeting in the first place.”

“It’s so cool that you showed up, though, and that you were able to tell us,” Victor said. “Trust me, I get how scary that is.”

Maggie smiled, and leaned over to give Cora a quick peck on the cheek. “See, I told you that you could do it.”

Cora blushed furiously, which was pretty adorable, and said, “Well, you might not be so impressed by my bravery if you knew how close I came to ralphing right after I said it out loud.”

“…And you totally ruined the moment,” Maggie joked, making an exaggeratedly grossed out face.

A little ways away from everyone, Victor could see Pilar and Anthony having what appeared to be a serious conversation. He couldn’t stop himself from asking Maggie, “What’s the deal with them? I didn’t even know that they knew each other.”

Maggie and Cora exchanged a look, and then Maggie said, “Um, maybe it’s better if you ask Pilar about it.”

Victor doubted he’d be able to get a straight answer out of his sister, who tended to be incredibly private despite how bad she was at respecting other people’s privacy. But his curiosity was definitely piqued, so he’d have to at least give it a try later.

Once Benji was ready to go, he and Victor headed out of the theater together. They both had shifts at Brasstown that evening so they made their way across the parking lot toward Victor’s truck.

“I think that went really well,” Benji said. “If we wanna do more pizza and outings and stuff we’re gonna have to work out a budget for the club, but Ms. Albright said that she could help with that-”

Benji stopped talking as Victor froze abruptly, staring ahead of them.

“Victor? What’s up?”

Leaning against the side of the truck were Teddy, Kieran, and Mark Robinson, a football player and another one of Teddy’s friends. Victor put a hand on Benji’s arm, near his wrist.

“It’s Teddy again.”

“Jesus christ,” Benji swore. “When will he ever just let this shit go?”

Victor took a step back, tugging on Benji’s arm. The parking lot was mostly deserted now that the majority of people had left for the day, and the sight of those three guys waiting around next to Victor’s car had a bad feeling settling in his gut.

“Let’s go back to the theater-” Victor started to say, but just then Kieran looked up and spotted them.

“Yo! Salazar!” Kieran shouted, alerting Teddy and Mark to their presence. Teddy immediately pushed himself away from the truck and began to stride rapidly toward them.

Benji and Victor were halfway in between the main school building and the theater, right near the center of the large parking lot, and either location would take a few minutes to get to. Victor felt his heart rate speeding up to a frantic pace as his fingers closed more tightly around Benji’s arm. He knew they should start walking away immediately, but for some reason the sight of the other guys moving swiftly toward them had his limbs locking up, like his legs hadn’t quite settled on whether fight or flight was a better response and had just frozen in panicked indecision instead.

“Victor,” Benji said nervously, trying to get his attention. “Victor, come on-”

He took a step back, but it was already too late. Teddy came to a stop right in front of them with the other two guys on either side of him. They were slightly spread out, like they were ready to try and block an escape if they needed to. Victor felt suddenly cold all over with fear.

“Two for one, huh?” Teddy said, looking them over. “I was just hoping to find you, Salazar, but this is even better.”

Swallowing past the anxiety that was threatening to choke him, Victor did his best not to let them see how scared he was. “What do you want, Teddy?”

“Oh, me and Kieran have a little pent up frustration to deal with. You know, since we’re not on the team anymore. And Mark – well, he’s just here for fun. I was thinking you and I could settle our differences like men.” Teddy cracked his knuckles, sneering. “Unless you’re too much of a sissy for that.”

“He’s not enough of an _idiot_ for that,” Benji snapped. “Come on, Victor. Let’s go.”

Benji tried to start walking away, pulling Victor with him, but Kieran and Mark moved quickly in front of them to block their way.

“We’re gonna settle this thing, one way or another,” Teddy growled. “You can fight back if either of you has the balls for it, or just take the beating like the pathetic, dirty little-”

Teddy didn’t get the chance to finish whatever nasty thing he was about to say, because to everyone’s shock, Benji suddenly twisted his wrist out of Victor’s grip and rushed at Teddy, slamming his shoulder hard into the other boy’s chest and knocking him to the ground. Benji didn’t even hesitate for a second, he just whipped around, grabbed Victor’s hand and pulled hard. Victor caught a brief flash of humiliated rage in Teddy’s eyes before he stumbled after Benji and they ran the entire way back to the theater, Kieran and Mark pounding across the pavement behind them. Victor and Benji were faster, though, and they made it into the building and halfway through the room to Ms. Albright, who was working on some paperwork in a chair near the stage, before they came to a stop. The room was empty now aside from her.

Kieran and Mark rushed in a second after them, and Ms. Albright got up from her seat in alarm as she caught sight of all of them.

“What the hell is going on?” she demanded. Kieran and Mark stood frozen at the back of the room. They clearly hadn’t been expecting to run into a teacher.

“Nothing, we just-” Kieran sputtered.

“They tried to attack us just now in the parking lot,” Benji explained, and Ms. Albright’s eyes went wide.

“They _what_?” Mark and Kieran began to protest loudly, but Ms. Albright interrupted them. “No, you know what, save whatever BS you’re about to feed me for the principal’s office.”

The four of them, plus Ms. Albright, ended up back in Meyers’ office ten minutes later. There was no sign of Teddy in the parking lot, so they’d had to give up looking for him, especially since Benji and Victor had a shift at Brasstown that they had to get to in the next half an hour.

“All we said was that we wanted to talk with them,” Kieran insisted stubbornly.

“Yeah right. Teddy was cracking his knuckles and talking about settling things ‘like men’ and you expect us to believe you only wanted to have a chat with us?” Benji said in disbelief. “You guys literally chased us across the parking lot and into the theater building.”

Kieran shook his head, not bothering to even look in Benji’s direction as he told Principal Meyers, “It was all just a misunderstanding, sir. Nothing happened.”

“It sure didn’t look like nothing to me,” Ms. Albright countered.

“Was anyone physically harmed?” Meyers asked, looking around at all of them in annoyance. Victor and Benji shook their heads. “Was any property damaged? No? Ms. Albright were you there to hear any threats being made?”

“No, but-”

“Well then, I don’t know what you expect me to do about this. It’s just one side’s word against the other. I’ve told you boys to stay away from each other so we can avoid any future situations like this, and I’ll say it again. Steer clear of each other if you can’t control yourselves.”

“That’s it? That’s all you’re gonna do about this?” Ms. Albright asked, a look of utter outrage on her face.

“Yes, without any evidence of wrongdoing, that’s all I _can_ do about it,” Meyers’ bit out impatiently. “Now if you all don’t mind I have some work to get back to.”

Out in the hallway a few minutes later, Ms. Albright shook her head in disgust. “I’m so sorry. Rest assured this is not over. I’m going to make some calls today and see what I can do about this situation. Let me at least walk you out to your car.”

No one was waiting to ambush them this time, so Victor and Benji thanked Ms. Albright and then climbed into the truck. They didn’t talk much on the way over to the cafe, but when Victor parked out back, neither of them moved to get out right away.

“This has to stop,” Victor said into the quiet. He looked over at Benji and admitted, “I was so scared earlier.”

Benji swallowed hard, his eyes full of hurt when they met Victor’s. “Yeah. Me, too.”

“What if they’d caught us? What if they’d-”

Victor couldn’t even say it. Up until this point, he hadn’t been afraid of Teddy. He’d been angry and frustrated and offended, but he hadn’t been afraid. What had happened that afternoon was different, though. It changed things.

“This is why we have to get them to agree to the training,” Benji said. “We need to talk to everyone we can at school this week. Get them to tell their parents to show up and vote for it.”

“Yeah, of course,” Victor agreed, but he couldn’t help feeling like that wasn’t going to be enough.

Monday evening Victor was worn out after the long day at school and then a closing shift at Brasstown, so even though he’d been wanting to message Simon, he didn’t actually get around to doing it until Tuesday afternoon when he got home from basketball practice.

_Hi Simon, how have you been?_

_Almost everything has been getting better for me lately. Me and my dad had a breakthrough last weekend and he’s now acknowledging that Benji exists even if he still_ _isn’t_ _t_ _o_ _o thrilled about our relationship. My mom and sister have been really great. Pilar actually came to the first GSA meeting with me yesterday_ _(which was awesome)_ _, and my mom_ _and Benji’s_ _are going to try and tackle the bullying proble_ _m_ _by bringing it up with the PTA this week._ _Most of my friends have_ _accepted me, and everyone else has finally started to lose interest in me and Benji being the first_ _and so far only_ _out gay couple_ _at school_ _._ _People hardly ever even try to take sneaky photos of us anymore._

_So everything’s going really well… except for this one guy who just won’t leave me and Benji alone. His name’s Teddy, and he’s the one that wrote that crap on my locker and got kicked off the team for it last month. Since then he hasn’t backed down at all. He hassles me all the time, and anyone else that’s close to me, including Benji and my friends. But yesterday something really bad happened. Teddy and a couple of other guys tried to attack me and Benji in the parking lot after school. We talked to a teacher and the principal about it, but the principal refused to believe us._

_Benji thinks_ _the_ _anti-bullying training_ _for the staff_ _is the best way to deal with it, but I’m scared that something else could happen before then. What do you think we should do?_

_Victor_

At dinner that evening, Isabel turned to Victor and asked, “ _Mijo_ , can you watch Adrian after school tomorrow? I’m going to be out until about dinnertime.”

Victor had therapy with Jake on Wednesdays, which he still hadn’t told his family about since he wasn’t sure how he felt about them knowing, and after that he and Benji were planning to hang out at Benji’s house. Alone. Which was definitely not something he wanted to cancel. He said, “Uh, sorry, but I already have plans tomorrow. Maybe Pilar could do it?”

“What if I’m busy, too?” Pilar asked, raising a brow. “You think you’re the only one with a life?”

“Jeez, way to make me feel unwanted,” Adrian groused.

“Well, one of you is going to have to step up, because your father’s working until six and I have important meetings to get to,” Isabel said.

Pilar narrowed her eyes. “What ‘important meetings’?”

Isabel took a sip of her wine and then announced, “I’m going to a job interview. It’s for a position teaching piano lessons at an after-school place in town.”

“Wow, _Mami_ , that’s awesome,” Victor said. Aside from the lessons she’d taught from their home, this would be the first job she’d had since he was born, and from the way her whole face was glowing, he could tell just how important it was to her.

“Thank you, _querido_. I don’t know if I’ll get it, but the extra money would be great, and I’ve really missed working.”

“Okay, that’s great, but that’s just one thing. Why do you need someone to babysit all afternoon?” Pilar asked. “I was going to hang out with Maggie after school.” At Isabel’s blank look, she clarified, “One of the girls from the GSA.”

“Oh,” Isabel said, a little uncertainly. “Okay. Are you… I mean, you’re going out as friends…?”

Pilar stared at Isabel solemnly. “ _Mami_ , there’s something I need to tell you. Don’t freak out or anything, but I’m straight.”

“Well, no need to be so sarcastic about it,” Isabel grumbled. Victor didn’t miss the flash of relief in her eyes, though, and it made his heart sink. Of course she’d be relieved not to have another queer kid to deal with. Isabel must have seen some sign of hurt in his face, because she hurried to say, “Not that I would love you any less either way. I love _all_ my kids, just the way God made you.”

“What about me?” Adrian asked. They all looked at him in confusion, so he said, “How did God make me?”

Isabel frowned. “What do you mean, honey?”

“Well, how do you know if you’re straight or gay? Which one am I?”

“Uh, that’s not really something you can know yet,” Isabel said slowly.

“Actually,” Victor interjected, thinking of what Benji had told him, “some people do know when they’re really young.”

Isabel seemed surprised, but she accepted what he’d said. “ _Bueno_ , at any rate, it’s not something that we can tell you. You have to figure it out yourself, and then when you know, you can tell us about it. But no matter what, I promise we will love you just as much as we do now.”

“Yep, you’ll always be my number one brother,” Victor told him, leaning over to ruffle Adrian’s hair and laughing when he was swatted away.

“Okay,” Adrian said easily, flattening his hair back down.

Victor watched his little brother push some pasta aimlessly around his plate and felt so grateful that Adrian would get to grow up knowing that he was loved without any limitations. It helped to ease the aching of his heart as he remembered all the years he’d lived through wishing he could hear those words himself.

“So, what’s this other thing you have going on tomorrow?” Pilar asked again.

“Oh, I’m getting coffee with Amelia after the interview.”

Victor blinked at her. “Amelia, as in, _Benji’s mom_ , Amelia?”

“Yes. We want to talk about the plan for the P. T. A. meeting tomorrow night, and uh… Well, we’ve actually been talking quite a bit recently,” Isabel admitted. “Ever since we all had dinner together. She’s been helping me out with… processing everything.”

“Oh.” Victor could not believe that his mom and Amelia Campbell had apparently been bonding for the past month over their gay sons. He didn’t even know what to say to that, but some part of him felt really touched by how hard Isabel was trying, and the help that Amelia was offering her.

Isabel looked expectantly between her two eldest children. “So, who’s going to step up and babysit tomorrow?”

“Why do I even need a babysitter when I’m not a baby?” Adrian grumbled.

Pilar and Victor stared each other down for a long moment, and then finally Pilar sighed loudly. “Fine,” she said, “I’ll do it. But can Maggie come hang out over here at least?”

“Sure,” Isabel said easily, as if Armando banning Benji from coming over to their house had never happened. His mom obviously caught the look on his face because she added, “Benji’s welcome to come over here, too, anytime. Just, uh, remember the door open policy, _por favor_.”

Victor blushed. “Okay.”

So this was their new normal, Victor mused, as he helped clean up the dishes after dinner. _All_ of their friends were welcome to come over to the house, Victor being gay wasn’t really a big deal anymore, and everyone was told they were loved no matter what. He’d spent so long being terrified that all of the worst possibilities would come true that he’d never spent much time wondering what the _best_ possibilities might be. He was so glad he got the chance to find out now.

School was refreshingly boring on Wednesday. He went to his classes, did his work, and fortunately saw very little of Teddy. Although he hadn’t let his guard down yet, he was starting to feel slightly less on edge all the time after two full days without any incidents. Andrew, on his own now, continued to join them at lunch, and if he and Mia weren’t already dating then they probably would be soon, if the nervous glances they were exchanging every few minutes were anything to go by. Victor had tried to get Mia to spill about it when they were talking in the hallway between periods, but she’d just replied with a vague, “it’s complicated” and Victor hadn’t tried to push.

As Victor was sitting in the waiting room before his appointment with Jake after school, he got a reply from Simon.

_Hi there Victor,_

_I’m really happy to hear that most things are getting better for you. The news about the “breakthrough” with your dad and most people at school chilling out a bit is really awesome. Hopefully it all just keeps on improving from here._

_What you said about Teddy is very scary, though. Are you okay? When you say that he “tried to attack you,” what do you mean? It sucks that the principal wouldn’t believe you guys and that your school has been handling things so badly. I agree with Benji that the training is a great idea, but you’re right. Something like that takes time, and it sounds like there’s a chance Teddy might try to hurt you before then. I think you should try and talk with someone about it, like a teacher or the school counselor. In the meantime, try to avoid this guy as much as possible._

_Hang in there and stay safe. Love, Simon_

Victor ended up talking with Jake about Teddy during his session, and in addition to some more advice on anger management, Jake also recommended speaking with an adult at school about the problem. As Jake pointed out, the more people who were aware of what was going on, the easier it would be for those staff to keep an eye out for trouble and step in when anything happened.

Since Ms. Albright was the teacher Victor trusted most to deal with everything, and she was already aware of what was going on, Victor decided that he would try speaking with the counselor the next day. He was planning to discuss it with Benji when he went over to his house after therapy, but he’d barely made it through the door before Benji was pressing him up against the wall and kissing him hard enough to make him completely forget about anything that wasn’t Benji’s mouth on his.

“Why’d you have to wear this stupid shirt today?” Benji complained, breaking away briefly to tug it up over Victor’s head.

“What’s wrong with it?” Victor asked, somehow managing to feel offended through the haze of desire clouding his brain. He was pretty sure it was one of his nicer ones.

Benji grabbed him by the hand and pulled him toward his room. “It’s all tight in the chest and shoulders, and way too damn distracting when we’re at school and I can’t just make out with you whenever I want to.”

As Benji pushed him down onto the bed and climbed into his lap, Victor privately vowed to wear the shirt as often as possible from then on.

Victor’s afternoon was going to be pretty busy on Thursday, with basketball practice and then the P. T. A. meeting afterward, so he had been hoping to get a chance to meet with the school counselor during the lunch break. Unfortunately, he was waylaid by Benji and Felix who had a project for Spanish class they wanted him to look over, and Feña had flat out refused to have anything to do with it. Victor was not as resilient against Benji’s puppy dog eyes as she was, so he’d been stuck correcting their grammar and spelling mistakes right up until the bell rang, and then there wasn’t any time left to try and meet with the counselor. He told himself he’d do it on Friday instead and headed off to class.

After last period, Victor was on his way to the gym when he felt his phone buzz. He pulled it out and saw that he had a new text from Benji.

_Come to the nurse’s office when you get this. And I really need you not to freak out please_

Victor stopped dead in his tracks to reread the message, a spike of fear going straight through his heart at the words on the screen. A million worst case scenarios started running through his panicked mind, but before he could fully process any of them he was spinning on his heel and racing off in the direction of the office. There were still a decent number of people milling around in the hallway, some of them giving him startled looks or trying to jump out of his way as he ran past, and a teacher shouted at him to slow down, but Victor barely noticed any of it. He skidded through the doorway of the nurse’s office out of breath, and then froze in shock when he saw what was waiting for him there.

Inside the small room were two cots, a rolling table, and a cupboard of medical supplies. Benji was sitting on one of the narrow beds, holding an ice pack against his mouth, and he had an arm wrapped tightly around his side like it was hurting him. In the other bed, in even worse shape, was Jeremy, a wad of bloody tissues held against his nose, which was a mottled red and blue to match the bruising around his left eye. He had his long legs stretched out before him and his head tilted slightly back against the wall. His eyes had been closed, but they flew open as Victor noisily entered the room.

“What-” Victor started. It felt difficult to talk with so much fearful energy thrumming inside of him. “What happened?”

“Mr. Salazar, what are you doing in here?” the nurse demanded as she returned to the room. The space felt even more cramped now that there were four people squeezed into it.

“It’s okay, I asked him to come. He’s my boyfriend,” Benji explained.

“You should really get permission first-” the nurse began, and then she sighed heavily. “You know what, never mind. You’ve had a bad enough day as it is.”

“Are you okay?” Victor took a tentative step closer to Benji, running his gaze over him in search of other injuries. As far as he could tell there didn’t seem to be anything else.

Benji reached out with his free hand, grabbing hold of Victor’s and pulling him over to the cot. Victor sat down carefully beside him.

“Just a busted lip and some bruised ribs. I’ll survive.”

Victor looked back and forth between Benji and Jeremy, who hadn’t spoken at all since Victor had arrived, and who seemed to be doing his best to avoid even looking in their direction. Victor remembered how much Jeremy had always hated Benji and his pulse began to suddenly race with fury.

“Benji, did he-” Victor started to ask, his eyes locked on Jeremy.

“No,” Benji said, cutting him off. Jeremy must have understood what Victor had meant to say because his jaw clenched and he made an even more concentrated effort to stare off into the corner of the room.

“No, it was Teddy, Victor. Him and a few other guys.”

A shiver ran down Victor’s spine at that. _A few other guys_. That meant there had been four of them. _Four_. “What happened?”

Benji was having a hard time talking with the ice pack on his mouth, so he pulled it away, and Victor’s breath caught at the sight of the bloody gash on Benji’s lower lip. Fresh blood started to well up now that the pressure had been removed, and the nurse immediately ordered him to put the ice back on it.

“I had P. E. last period today, and this guy asked me if I could talk with him privately after class,” Benji said, slightly muffled. “He’s never bothered me or anything before, and I don’t know, I guess I thought it might be something like, uh… you know, another GSA kind of situation.”

Victor figured Benji meant something like when Anthony and Maggie had approached him because they’d needed someone to talk to. He nodded to show he understood. “Who was it?”

“Glenn Thomas.” Victor knew him, although not very well. They’d been in the same class in seventh grade. He mostly remembered Glenn being pretty quiet, more the type to follow someone else’s lead than to be the leader himself. Benji continued, saying, “Anyway, we went around behind the gym so we could talk in private, and he was being weird, like, not really telling me anything, and that’s when Teddy, Kieran, and Mark showed up. At first Teddy wanted me to fight him one on one, I guess to show the other guys how tough he is or whatever, and I managed to defend myself for a bit, but then the rest of them jumped in. Luckily they didn’t do much besides kick me a couple of times before Jeremy stopped them.”

Victor’s gaze flew over to Jeremy in surprise, and Jeremy must have been watching him and waiting for Victor’s reaction because their eyes locked immediately. Jeremy quickly turned away again.

“How could he stop _all_ of them?”

“He surprised them, I guess. And he’s scrappier than he looks.”

“What a compliment,” Jeremy drawled sarcastically in response, speaking for the first time since Victor had arrived.

“Also, Coach Harris and another teacher showed up like a couple of minutes after him and dragged everyone away to see Meyers.”

“He better fucking do something this time,” Victor growled, too upset to care that he’d just sworn in front of the nurse. He reached a hand up to touch the side of Benji’s face, tracing over the smooth, unblemished skin along his jawline. _There had been four of them_. Four against one. It could have been so much worse than it was, and the thought of that made Victor want to hunt Teddy down and make him pay for all of it. For every insult and prank and act of violence, for all the stress and the fear and the anger he’d made both of them suffer through. For ever daring to lay his hands on Benji.

Benji was watching him carefully, and he brought his hand up to catch the one that Victor still had pressed lightly against his face. He threaded their fingers together, resting their joined hands on top of his thigh. “Victor, I’m fine. Just try and let it go for now, okay?”

Victor’s mouth tightened and he could already feel himself starting to breathe faster again. “How can you say that? How am I supposed to just let something like this go?”

“Because I need you to. Even Meyers will probably have no choice but to suspend Teddy after what he did today, and you freaking out and trying to start a fight with him or whatever won’t help anything. Okay?”

Victor really, really wanted to go find Teddy wherever he was and punch him right in the face, but Benji needed him now and Victor had to do what Benji asked. He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, the way Jake had taught him to do. “Okay,” he agreed.

“Wow, anger issues much?” Jeremy snarked, and Victor felt some of his irritation make an immediate return. He couldn’t stay angry at Jeremy, though, not after all he’d done that day.

“Are you all right?” Victor asked him.

He just shrugged and said, “I’ve had worse.”

Jeremy glanced over at them, his gaze landing on their joined hands, and he grimaced and returned to staring at the wall. The nurse moved the rolling table over, and began to treat Benji’s lip, cleaning it and placing a small bandage over the cut to hold the edges pressed together. “Keep that ice on there,” she instructed. “Could you lift your shirt up a little so I can get a look at those ribs?”

Benji dragged his shirt up, and Victor had to start breathing deep all over again just to control the rage he felt at the sight of the dark purple and red bruises that were already starting to form across Benji’s lower torso. The nurse gently pressed her fingers against his sides, making Benji wince slightly, but she pulled away a moment later looking satisfied.

“I don’t think anything’s broken, but you’ll need to get an x-ray to be sure.” She moved away to Jeremy’s side of the room, saying, “Now, let’s take a look at you.”

She examined his nose carefully, informing him that it might be fractured, took a look at his eye and ribs, and after she’d finished she bustled out of the room, leaving the three of them alone again. Victor couldn’t stop thinking the words over and over again, like a chant: _t_ _here had been four of them_. He felt his stomach lurch with every repetition.

“Thank you,” Victor said, breaking the silence that had fallen over them, and startling Jeremy out of his own thoughts. Their eyes met for a brief moment. “Thank you for helping him.”

Jeremy’s only acknowledgment was a quick nod.

Victor really wanted to ask him why he’d done it. Jeremy had never been anything but hateful toward Benji in the past, and he’d never seemed like the type of person that would put himself in harm’s way for someone else. Jumping into the middle of a fight that had nothing to do with him, just to help out someone that he didn’t even like, made zero sense. But as much as he wanted to understand it, Victor couldn’t bring himself to ask, and he doubted he would get an honest answer even if he did.

A few minutes later, there were some loud voices in the main office and then Amelia came rushing into the room. She took one look at Benji, her eyes welling up with tears, and then she swooped down to wrap him up in a hug.

Benji shifted a little uncomfortably. “Oof, watch the ribs, Mum. And I’m fine, by the way, you don’t need to get all soppy about it.”

“This is the _second time_ you’ve been attacked at this damn school, I’ll get emotional if I want to,” Amelia snapped, but she immediately loosened her hold and pulled away to get a closer look at him. She made Benji show her his lip and the bruises on his sides, and her face grew stormier by the second. “Heads are going to fucking roll if we don’t get some major changes around here. I will call in the ALCU if I have to. That principal won’t even know what hit him-”

“It’s the _ACLU_ , Mum, and could you please calm down? You’re stressing me out.”

Amelia stopped her tirade, but she continued to seethe quietly as she took a seat on Benji’s other side on the cot. “Your father’s on his way. He should be here soon.”

“Yours should be arriving any minute now, too,” the nurse told Jeremy as she returned to the room. Jeremy’s head whipped around to stare at her in alarm.

“What? I told you to call my stepmom-”

“I did, but she wasn’t picking up, so we had to call your father instead.” She frowned. “Is something wrong?”

Jeremy shook his head, but his face looked like it had just been drained of what little color it had to begin with.

“Are you gonna be all right?” Benji asked him.

“I’ll be fine,” Jeremy muttered.

“You sure about that? Because if you want to you could come over to our house later,” Benji offered. Amelia’s eyes had narrowed slightly in concern, but she nodded in agreement.

“I said I’ll be fine. Just drop it.”

It was obvious from the stubborn set of Benji’s jaw that he wasn’t going to let things go that easily, but he didn’t say anything else about it for the moment. Now that Benji and Jeremy had been treated by the nurse, they were all sent to wait in the receptionist’s area outside of Meyers’ office. Victor went with them, although he knew he’d probably have to leave as soon as it was time for them to go inside.

Mike showed up after they’d been waiting there for a few minutes, drawing Benji into another hug and looking about as furious as Amelia was. Right after Mike another man walked in, a tall guy with dark hair and pale skin wearing a brown sheriff’s uniform. He strode right up to Jeremy and stood facing him, waiting for Jeremy to stand up, which he did quickly.

“Hi,” Jeremy said quietly, without meeting his father’s eyes.

Sheriff Walsh clapped a heavy hand on Jeremy’s shoulder as he looked him over. “That’s quite the shiner,” he said, in a low voice. “You got that in a fight?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, that was a real dumbass thing to do. Hope whatever it was you were fighting about was worth the consequences you’ll be getting for this.”

Jeremy just hung his head and didn’t respond. A second later, the door to Meyers’ office swung open and the four guys that had attacked Benji came out, single file. The sight of all of them, especially Teddy who was glowering around the room like he was the victim here, had Victor’s blood boiling, and if it wasn’t for Benji’s presence at his side he might have been unable to stop himself from jumping up and slamming his fist into Teddy’s face. Benji had noticed the way Victor tensed up and grabbed hold of Victor’s hand, squeezing it and saying lowly, “Just chill, Victor.”

Sheriff Walsh caught sight of their joined hands and his eyes narrowed in suspicion. Victor immediately pulled away, but it was already too late. The sheriff’s expression was dark with contempt, and he cut his gaze sharply over to his son, who continued to stare steadily down at the floor.

Everyone went into the office to speak with Meyers and Teddy’s group was asked to sit down in the receptionist’s area, so Victor headed out to the hallway to wait for Benji since there was no way he’d be able to stay in the same room as them without losing his shit. He sat down on the floor, leaning back against the lockers, and fought down every instinct he had to go storming back into the other room in order to confront the Teddy and the others.

There were some unread texts on his phone from some of his teammates asking why he hadn’t shown up for practice, so Victor sent Andrew a message explaining that he couldn’t come because of an emergency. Once that was done, he just sat there and stared up at the ceiling and waited.

About twenty minutes later, a loud banging noise followed by the sound of rapid footsteps had him looking over just in time to see Sheriff Walsh storm out into the hallway, Jeremy trailing him at a fractionally slower pace. Neither of them paid much attention to Victor as they headed for the doors leading out of the school, but about halfway there Jeremy stopped suddenly. Victor watched them apprehensively, swiftly rising to his feet.

“No,” Jeremy said, just barely loud enough for Victor to catch the sound of it.

Sheriff Walsh took another few steps before he realized Jeremy was no longer following him, and then he turned to see what had happened. Jeremy was standing frozen, his hands clenched into trembling fists at his sides, and he was staring into the distance just past his father rather than looking at him directly.

“Let’s go,” the sheriff ordered, already half-turning toward the exit, but his frown deepened as he realized Jeremy wasn’t going to follow. “I said, we’re leaving _now_ , boy. Move.”

“No,” Jeremy repeated. “I’m not going with you.”

“The hell you’re not. You’re in deep enough shit as it is, you really want to make things worse for yourself by disobeying me?”

“So, what then? You expect me to just come home and take another beating from you like a good boy? _I’m. Not. Going._ ”

Principal Meyers, along with Benji and his parents, had all rushed out into the hallway as well, and everyone looked alarmed at the words Jeremy had just spoken. The sheriff’s jaw worked as he struggled to control his rage at being called out so publicly, and he said in a tone so quiet Victor could barely hear it, “You will shut your mouth about that.”

 _“No, I won’t!”_ Jeremy shouted back, growing louder and less controlled. “I am done doing what you tell me to and taking whatever abuse you throw at me! _I’m fucking done!_ ”

“I told you to shut your mouth! You deserve what you got today, and you’ll deserve whatever you get for talking back to me like this.” The sheriff gestured wildly at Benji, his face livid. “You were screwing around with him, too, weren’t you? You fucking-”

“Yeah,” Jeremy sneered, “Maybe I was! Maybe I was screwing half the football team, too. _I’m fucking gay, Dad_ , and you can hit me all you want but it’s not going to fucking change anything!”

Something seemed to snap just then, the delicate thread that had been straining to hold back the well of fury inside of the sheriff no longer strong enough to restrain him. He rushed forward, fist raised, but before he could reach his target Principal Meyers and Mike were hauling him back. He struggled out of their grasp and Mike pushed him hard, sending him stumbling a few steps farther away from his son.

Amelia quickly moved forward to take Jeremy by the arm and pull him to her, toward the safety of the main office, where Victor could hear the secretary’s voice saying, “Hello? Yes, I’d like to report an emergency situation at Brandon High School…”


	41. A Great Love Story

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: brief mentions of violence, homophobia, and bullying. Some mild sexual humor.

_Simon, I’m really sorry it took me so long to reply to your last message. I know you’ve probably been worried. It’s just that a lot happened in the last few days and honestly I_ _was_ _completely distracted by all of it._

_So, let me catch you up on everything now. Last Thursday Teddy and three other guys attacked Benji after school. Before you freak out, he’s actually doing okay. He has a split lip and some bruises, which is_ _horrible_ _, but it would have been so much worse if Jeremy (yes, the same Jeremy that threatened to out me to the whole school) hadn’t showed up to save him. Jeremy ended up with a broken nose, a black eye, and he had to leave home as a result of a huge fight with his dad, all because he chose to step in and help Benji._

_Jeremy actually went to stay at Benji’s house for a couple of days since it wasn’t safe for him to go home, but from now on he’ll be living with his uncle on his mom’s side. I guess they lost touch after Jeremy’s mom died when he was a kid, so the uncle didn’t know about how bad things were for him with his dad, but it sounds like they’re going to try and_ _get legal guardianship for his uncle. The school reported Jeremy’s dad for child abuse and it seems pretty likely he’ll be found guilty of it._

_Even though Benji had just gotten_ _hurt_ _on Thursday, it didn’t stop him from going_ _straight from the ER_ _to the PTA meeting that night and talking to all the parents about the bullying problem. I think his busted lip was probably what sealed the deal, but him and both of our moms gave really great speeches, so pretty much everybody voted in favor of the training. And if that doesn’t improve things, I heard from Ms. Albright that she pulled her “BFF’s with the superintendent card” and now Meyers is 100% on board with making some big changes at school_ _(if he doesn’t there’s a good chance he’ll get fired.)_

_Maybe the best news of all is that Teddy and the three other guys involved in the attack all got suspended for two weeks, and they_ _have_ _to attend mandatory meetings with the counselor when they get back._

_What happened to Benji and Jeremy on Thursday was awful and infuriating and incredibly scary. Every time I look at Benji and I see the cut on his lip, or the bruises on his ribs, it makes me angry all over again. But as terrible as all_ _o_ _f it was, we had a lot of big wins, too. Benji wasn’t hurt as badly as he could’ve been. Jeremy’s no longer living in a dangerous home. And now things_ _are going_ _to be really different at school._ _For the first time in a very long time I’m feelin_ _g_ _optimistic_ _about life in Brandon_ _. Guess you were right – things do get better._

_Love Victor_

_“_ _Y tu novio? Qué dijo cuando se enteró?”_

_“Ay,_ _no te lo puedo decir,_ _me da rabia cuando pienso en-”_

Victor was so wrapped up in unintentionally eavesdropping on the conversation occurring in Spanish just a few feet away from the counter that he nearly missed the drink order Benji called out to him. The carton of milk that he already had on hand didn’t have quite enough left in it, so without realizing which language he was speaking he held out his hand and said, “ _Amor, dame la leche,_ _porfa_ _.”_

Benji froze in the middle of automatically passing him the milk, and when Victor glanced over to see what the hold up was, Benji was grinning at him.

“What?” Victor asked, mentally backtracking to figure out what he’d done to earn that reaction, and felt his face heat up as he realized what he’d just said.

Benji leaned in close as he handed over the milk, talking quietly enough that the customers nearby wouldn’t hear. “’ _Amor_ ’… I have to admit, I _really_ like the sound of that.”

It was the first time in Victor’s life that he’d ever called anyone that, and somehow it had just popped out of his mouth without him even noticing. Benji was biting his lower lip, and his eyes were warm and amused, and Victor was supposed to be doing something but he just couldn’t make himself look away. The thought of having to wait two more hours to kiss Benji was absolutely maddening. He loved working with Benji, but sometimes these long Saturday opening shifts were a special kind of torture, especially at moments like this when all Victor wanted to do was grab him by his too-tight t-shirt, drag him into the backroom, and –

“Whoah, is it hot in here, or is it just you two?”

They both jumped and whipped around to look over at the counter, where Lake was standing near the cash register with a big smile on her face. Felix was beside her, and Mia and Andrew were nearby examining the stuff on display in the pastry case. Victor felt his blush spread right up to the tips of his ears.

“Man, you could cut the sexual tension in this place with a knife,” Felix joked. He shook his head at them. “If you’re done staring intensely at each other, I will take a large hazelnut latte, and the lady here will have, uh… what did you want again? A skinny venti with, um, split quad shots and, uh, three pumps of-”

Lake rolled her eyes. “Let me handle this, babe.”

Benji took Lake and Felix’s orders, and as Lake was paying he asked them, “So, what are you guys up to today?”

“Oh, there’s going to be an open air art exhibit in the Brandon Commons this afternoon, so we thought we’d hang here for a bit and then go check it out,” Mia explained. Victor couldn’t help noticing how close she and Andrew were standing. It seemed pretty likely that they were on a date, even if they weren’t holding hands or anything obvious like that, and he shot her a smile when their eyes met. Mia returned it a little shyly and asked, “When do you guys get off work? Wanna join us?”

“Sure, I’m up for that if you are,” Benji said, looking to Victor, who nodded in agreement. “We’ll be done at three.”

The others went to sit down with their drinks and snacks, and about ten minutes later it was time for Victor’s break so he wandered over to join them.

“What’s that supposed to be?” Felix asked, squinting at the foam on top of Victor’s cappuccino.

“To be honest, I’m not really sure,” Victor admitted quietly, so that Benji, who was bussing a table nearby, wouldn’t overhear. “I think maybe a basketball?”

Felix frowned. “Or a… meatball? Although if you turn the cup this way, it could be a pig.”

“What? How does it look anything like a pig?” Felix turned the cup to demonstrate. “Oh, uh… yeah, maybe.” They both contemplated the foam art for a moment and then Victor said loyally, “Benji’s actually a very talented artist.”

“Oh, yeah, of course,” Felix agreed easily. “Yours is a man of many talents.”

“Speaking of Benji’s many talents, this coffee is _perfect_ ,” Lake commented, sighing dreamily after she took a sip. “I mean, is there anything at all he doesn’t do flawlessly?”

Victor and Felix pointedly did not look down at Victor’s cappuccino.

Mia and Andrew were sitting slightly angled toward each other and away from the rest of the group, talking in low voices about something related to the song that was playing at the moment. There was definitely a flirty vibe to the way they were interacting that had Felix, Lake, and Victor all staring at each other awkwardly in search of something else to chat about.

“So!” Lake said, a bit too loudly. “Any spring break plans, Victor?”

“Not really. It’s still a month away so I haven’t actually thought about it. Sometimes we visit my grandma in Puerto Rico, but I don’t think we’re doing that this year. What about you?”

“Well, my mom wants to go back to the Maldives again, like we did last year, but that’s just like, ‘been there, done that,’ am I right?” Felix and Victor stared at her blankly. “Anyway, the jet lag is _killer_ on the way back from Asia, so I’m thinking of skipping it and organizing something on my own. Mia – _Mia_ , helloooo over there-”

Mia turned to Lake with a startled expression, like she’d completely forgotten that the rest of them existed.

“Mia, what did your dad tell you about spring break?”

She looked sheepish. “Oh, um, I kinda forgot to ask him about it after the big fight we had the other night. I’m sure he’ll say yes, though. With the baby coming and all this wedding insanity I can pretty much guilt trip him into anything I want these days.”

“Well, hurry up and ask him, okay? And you guys should all come, too, if you don’t have other plans. Oh my god, how much fun would that be?”

“Come where?” Andrew asked.

“My grandparents have these cabins in the Hill Country that they hardly ever use, and it’s only like a three hour drive from here. They’re right on a big lake, and there’s a ton of cool stuff to do in the area, not to mention Austin’s really close… It would be _so amazing_ if we could all go together!”

“I don’t know… My parents can be kind of strict. I doubt they’d actually let me do something like that,” Victor admitted.

“Yeah, and you’re basically talking about getting a group of teenagers together at a cabin in the woods. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that movie and it does _not_ end well for us,” Felix said darkly.

“Ugh, stop saying creepy things. This is going to be the fun, hang out by the lake in our swimsuits kind of cabin getaway, all right? Not the gross, murder-y kind. And as for you,” she said, looking to Victor, “my uncle and his family will also be there, so we will have some adult supervision. Just, uh, maybe not _a lot_ of adult supervision.”

“A cabin all to ourselves, chilling by a lake, very few adults around… Sounds pretty sweet,” Andrew said.

Lake perked up. “Does that mean you’re in?”

He nodded. “Probably. I doubt my dad will have any objections, if he even notices I’ve gone anywhere.”

“I guess if your uncle’s there then my mom and Aunt Cathy will be cool with it,” Felix said.

“Yay!” Lake squealed, grabbing hold of Felix’s arm and hugging it tightly. She waved to Benji, who came over and took a seat next to Victor since the cafe was so quiet at the moment. “Benji, do you have spring break plans yet?”

“Nope. My dad was trying to talk me into a fishing trip, but I seriously hate fishing, so…”

“You _have_ to come with us to my family’s cabin in the Hill Country. Everyone else is in – right, Victor?”

Victor nodded uncertainly. “I guess it can’t hurt to at least ask my parents about it.”

“All right, I’ll try asking mine, too,” Benji said. “No guarantees it’s gonna happen, though. They’ve been… uh, slightly clingy recently.”

Ever since Teddy’s attack a little over a week ago, Benji had been complaining that his parents were being aggressively over-protective of him, Amelia especially. But Benji’s injuries were mostly healed now, aside from a slim scab that hadn’t entirely disappeared on his lower lip, and things really were changing fast at school, especially with Teddy and his friends gone. No one bothered them much anymore, and Victor was finally starting to feel like their lives were getting back to normal for the first time since he’d come out. Or at least a new, much better version of normal.

Once Victor and Benji had finished their shift, the six of them headed out across the street to the Brandon Commons. Art exhibits had popped up all around the central space, along with vendors selling various handmade crafts, some food carts, and a small stage where someone was performing a classical guitar piece at the moment. As they walked around, they saw everything from photography to sculpture to performance art, some of which was really cool, while others Victor just found confusing.

“What am I even looking at right now?”

He squinted at the large, tan dome in front of them, which was giving off a faint glow from an inner light source, and shadows seemed to be moving across the material at the top. Directly ahead of him was an entrance to the dome-tent-thing, the pink flaps on either side framing a kind of tunnel that led into it.

The others all snorted or outright giggled at Victor’s confusion, and even Benji looked like he was having a hard time not openly laughing at him.

“What?” he demanded. “What is it?”

“The title of the work is, uh… ‘A Return to the Womb’,” Andrew read out, gesturing at the sign that had been posted nearby.

Victor felt his whole face go intensely hot for the second time that day. “ _Oh_.”

“It says viewers are welcome to – ah – to enter it,” Andrew continued, struggling to keep from dissolving into laughter. Lake was giggling so hard she had to cling to Felix just to hold herself upright. “The artist invites the viewer to rediscover the mystery of birth and to connect viscerally with the power of the feminine through a journey back into the sacred space of the maternal.”

“I’m going in,” Mia said, wiping away tears of mirth from her eyes and heading toward the entrance.

“Wait up, I’m coming, too! Gotta get me some of that sacred feminine power of maternity or whatever.” Lake rushed over, taking Mia’s hand, and the two of them disappeared into the tunnel.

The four boys were left standing there contemplating the work of art in front of them. Felix said, “Well, this I have to see. You guys game?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Andrew said, following Felix over to the dome.

Victor turned to Benji, and as soon as their eyes met they both burst out laughing.

“I think I’ll pass,” Victor said.

Benji took Victor’s hand in his, saying, “Yeah, me, too,” and they wandered off to see what else was on display.

About twenty minutes later, Victor and Benji were snacking on churros and admiring some wildlife photography when they ran into the others again.

“Oh, wow, the shot of the Cedar Waxwing is stunning,” Felix commented as he and Andrew wandered over. Lake and Mia trailed behind them, deep in conversation.

“Yeah. You should check out the one of the Painted Bunting over there, too. It’s amazing,” Benji said, nodding toward a photo of an especially colorful bird.

Victor hung back with Andrew as Benji and Felix began discussing bird watching of all things like a couple of adorable grandpas. Andrew cocked his head a little and said, “Never would’ve expected your guy to have hidden nerdy depths.”

Victor looked up at him sharply, and Andrew gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Hey, relax, man. That wasn’t meant as a put down. Pretty sure it’s cool to be a nerd these days, anyway.”

“Oh, yeah? Do you have some ‘hidden nerd depths’ that we don’t know about?” Victor challenged him.

“As a matter of fact, maybe I do.”

“Really? Okay, let’s hear it then. What nerdy thing are you into?”

“Well, for one thing I am obsessed with classic video games. Street Fighter, Mario, Zelda, all that good stuff.”

“Not to mention his ongoing hardcore stanning of Dragonball Z,” Mia added as she and Lake came to join them. She bumped her shoulder against Andrew’s arm playfully. “Oh my god, remember when you dressed up like that Dragonball character for Halloween in fourth grade? You know, the one with the green skin, and you went around leaving patches of paint everywhere you went all day. I seriously thought Ms. Santelmann was going to strangle you with your own cape.”

“ _You’re_ an anime nerd?” Victor asked disbelievingly.

Andrew pretended to look around them nervously. “Watch it, Salazar, you’re going to ruin my reputation.”

“Sorry,” Victor said sarcastically, “I just never would’ve guessed that you and Felix would have anything in common.”

Andrew shot Felix a considering look and shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”

Just then Felix, who had been in the middle of a heated discussion with Benji about migratory patterns or something (Victor had no idea), stopped mid-speech, his jaw dropping open, and said, “ _Mom?_ ”

Victor turned to look in the direction Felix was staring, and there was Lisa Weston, dressed in jeans and a green sweater, looking healthier than Victor could remember seeing her for a very long time. Next to her was a woman with shoulder length light brown hair that was graying a little around the temples, who was definitely Felix’s Aunt Cathy judging by the clear family resemblance.

“Oh, hi, honey,” Lisa said. “I didn’t know you were going to be here tonight.”

“What are you _doing_ here?” Felix blurted out. “I mean, it’s awesome you’re here, I just – uh-”

Lisa shrugged, looking like she was working hard to remain casual. “Well, you know I love a good art show…”

“There was no way we could stay cooped up inside the house on a day like today,” Cathy said.

Felix nodded, and then turned to the side for a moment and discretely rubbed at his eyes. As soon as he turned back, there was a broad smile on his face. “Oh, yeah, of course. I’m, um, I’m really glad you guys made it.”

“Hi, Lisa,” Victor said. “It’s really nice to see you.”

She smiled at him, warm but slightly nervous. “You, too, Victor. It’s been a while.” She waved to Lake, who had been hanging back a bit, but now walked over to join them. “How are you, Lake? Are you enjoying the show?”

Lake began describing some of the exhibits she’d liked, and they all made small talk for a few more minutes while Felix stood there grinning at his mom with pride. Eventually Lisa began to look a little overwhelmed by all the socializing, and Cathy cut in smoothly.

“Well, you kids enjoy your evening. I think we’ll go find those mimes Lake mentioned, they sound like a real hoot.”

After saying goodbye to Lisa and Cathy, they ended up collecting more snacks and finding a spot to sit down in the grass under some oak trees, near enough to the stage to be able to hear the music without being drowned out by it. There was a Folk duo playing, which wasn’t really Victor’s thing, but it went well with the warm early evening air and the haze of sunset which was gradually tinting everything around them red and orange. Victor was a little surprised by how well the six of them fit together. He never would have expected to end up with this particular group of people, but he was so glad that he had, and he found himself really hoping that his parents could somehow be persuaded to let him go with the others on the spring break trip.

He leaned back against the tree trunk, and reached out to wrap an arm around Benji’s shoulders. Benji scooted closer, tucking in against his side, a warm, solid presence that Victor wanted to keep close to him for as long as he could. He realized that he didn’t care at that moment who could see them or what anyone else might think about them; he had Benji and he had an amazing new group of friends, and he felt truly comfortable in his own skin in a way that he hadn’t for so much of his life.

Because he was feeling so happy and fearless just then, he turned to the side and pressed a kiss against Benji’s temple, next to the sweep of his hair. Benji looked up at him, a little surprised, but smiling in that way he did that felt like it was just for Victor, so Victor kissed him again, on the mouth, briefly but sweetly.

“Oh my gosh, if you two get any more adorable I’m going to be forced to come over there and join the cuddlefest,” Lake teased them. “Don’t think I won’t do it. I will cuddle you both to within an inch of your lives.”

“She is a _very_ aggressive cuddler,” Felix confirmed.

“Bring it on,” Benji challenged, his eyes sparking with laughter. Lake’s smile grew even wider, and without another second’s hesitation, she leapt up and threw herself at Benji. Victor slipped away from them quickly, watching in shock as he tried to figure out whether Lake was trying to hug his boyfriend or wrestle him, and wondered if he should do anything to save him.

In the end the thrashing, giggling pile of limbs they’d descended into was too intimidating, so he crawled over to Mia instead, where it was safe.

“You said, cuddling, not tickling!” Benji complained, but he’d brought it on himself, so Victor didn’t have a lot of sympathy for him.

Mia leaned into Victor’s shoulder, shaking her head at them and laughing as Andrew shouted out indiscriminate encouragement to whoever seemed to be winning. She nudged him with her elbow and asked, “You’re not going to try and rescue him?”

“Uh, I think at the moment my fear of getting tickled is outweighing my love of Benji,” Victor admitted sheepishly.

Mia raised her brows. “’Love’, huh?”

“Uh,” Victor stammered, not really sure what to say and hoping he hadn’t just made things awkward with Mia. But she just grinned and leaned a little more into his side.

“Lake was right, you guys are too cute for your own good,” Mia said. He could feel himself flushing again (it seemed to be happening way too often that day), and Mia poked his shoulder. “Don’t go getting all shy on us, though. It’s actually really nice to see. After all the crap you guys have been through, you deserve a chance to just be happy. Hey, um… I think I want to get some tea. Wanna walk with me?”

“Sure,” Victor said. Benji and Lake’s tickling-cuddling-wrestling match had ended in the two of them lying on their backs over by the tree, laughing and chatting about the possible spring break trip, so Victor didn’t really feel bad about getting up and leaving the group for a bit.

“We’ll be right back,” Mia said when Andrew looked up at her questioningly. She looped her arm through Victor’s and they began to weave their way through the crowd toward the food cart Mia had mentioned.

“So, how are things going with you and Andrew? This is a date tonight, right?”

“Um… it’s kind of like a… a trial date.”

“A what?” Victor asked, laughing.

“A trial date – like, just to see if we fit together now or not.” She sighed. “Okay, I guess this is something I probably should have told you back when we were dating, but me and Andrew have some… history together. I’ve never told anyone about it, though, except for Lake, because I wasn’t really in a good place the last time something happened between us, and maybe I was embarrassed to like a guy who’s such a… _jock_.”

She said it like it was something distasteful she’d discovered on the bottom of her shoe, which made Victor shake his head and point out, “Um. You do get that I’m also kind of a jock, right?”

“You know what I mean,” she said, rolling her eyes. They reached the food cart, so they ordered a couple of drinks and then stepped to the side to wait for them. “There is something about him, though. Something that keeps making me come back to the possibility of being with him.”

After receiving their iced teas, they ended up wandering around a bit rather than heading straight back. Lights were popping on all over the place as the sun sank lower on the horizon, and the Folk duo on stage was replaced by something a little more Country-Western.

“It’s pretty obvious you like him, Mia. I know that, uh, you’re probably a little wary of getting back out there again, but I think you guys might be really good together.”

She was quiet for a long, thoughtful moment. “It’s just… scary opening yourself up to someone. You never know when they might leave.”

Victor knew that she was talking about her mom, but he couldn’t help feeling like she might be thinking of him as well, and he knew that their break up was probably playing a part in her reluctance to open up to someone again.

“Showing other people who you really are is always scary. It gives them a lot of power to hurt you. But it also gives them the chance to make you really, really happy, and you’ll never get to experience that happiness if you don’t take the risk in the first place.”

They were headed back toward the others now, but Mia stopped as their little group came into sight past the crowd. Her hand tightened on his arm nervously as she asked, “How do you know if someone is worth the risk?”

Victor had to think for a moment about the best way to answer that. His eyes found Benji in the distance, sitting up against the tree now and talking animatedly about something. They hadn’t even known each other for very long; Benji had only just moved to Brandon six months ago but it was already impossible for Victor to imagine his life without him. There had never been a person that Victor had trusted so much or so quickly.

“My family almost moved away from Brandon last fall,” Victor told her. “It was when all that stuff was going down with my parents, like I told you about – my mom’s affair, my dad losing his job – and for awhile it really seemed like we would have to leave. I had just figured out that I was gay, and broken up with you, and everything with Benji was still really new and confusing. At first I was so nervous about trying to be with him, even though I really wanted to. I kept thinking I’d screw it up somehow, or that I didn’t know how to be in a relationship with a guy… but maybe the truth was that I was just scared of letting someone else see the real me for the first time in my life. I didn’t know what to do until I found out we might be leaving. That’s when I realized he was worth it. Because without even knowing it I had already been showing him the real me, a little bit at a time, and he’d always made me feel like I was worthy of being seen and, um… and loved. That’s how I knew that I was ready to be with him.”

Mia’s eyes were shining as they reflected the lights overhead, and the sunset was making her curls glow a soft reddish-brown. She was still the prettiest girl he’d ever known. He carefully tucked a perfect ringlet back behind her ear and said, “One of my friends told me that I deserved a great love story, and the truth is that we _all_ do. You do, too, Mia.”

The next day Victor was expecting to go visit his dad in the afternoon, but as he was eating breakfast with his family Isabel got a phone call, and then a few minutes later announced to them, “Your dad said he won’t be able to see you guys today because of an emergency situation at one of the buildings he manages. I guess there was a fire early this morning, and luckily no one was hurt, but he’s going to be busy all day dealing with it.”

Adrian’s face fell as he drooped in his chair. “We can’t see _Papi_ today?”

“No, I’m sorry, _mi amor_. I know you were really looking forward to it.”

The disappointment on his little brother’s face was breaking his heart, so Victor offered, “Maybe we could do something fun later when you guys get back from church. We could take the horses out if you want.”

“Yay!” Adrian cheered, immediately perking up again.

“Oh, while we’re all here, I have some good news,” Isabel said, her eyes sparkling with barely restrained joy. “Remember that job I interviewed for? Well, I got it. I’m starting tomorrow!”

“ _Felicidades_ ,” Victor said, leaning over in his chair to give her a hug. Adrian cheered again, while Pilar offered her congratulations as well.

“Before you guys get too excited, this does mean you two will have to step up more often to help out with the babysitting. I’m going to make a chart and attach it to the fridge so we can all coordinate our schedules.” Pilar groaned, of course, and Isabel hurried to say, “ _But_ I was also thinking that with some of the extra money coming in, maybe we can afford to pay for something fun after school for Adrian some days. What do you think, honey? Is there anything you’d like to try? Maybe soccer, or a music class, or basketball like your _hermano_ …”

Adrian considered it for about two seconds before exclaiming, “I wanna do ballet with Ashley!”

“Oh.” Isabel blinked hard, but composed herself faster than Victor would’ve expected. “Okay. If that’s what you want, then ballet it is. I’ll talk to Ashley’s mom and find out about it.”

Once they’d finished cleaning up breakfast, Victor texted Benji to let him know that he was now free to hang out later that day. Benji had an opening shift at Brasstown but he drove himself over to the Salazar house in Amelia’s car after he finished work at one o’clock. The others had already arrived back from church at that point, which sadly meant no alone time for them, but even so Victor was excited to finally have Benji over to his house again for the first time since Christmas.

“Hey,” he said, opening the door to let Benji inside. He gave him a kiss hello and then took Benji’s hand and led him over to the kitchen where Isabel was in the middle of some kind of baking project.

Isabel glanced over her shoulder and smiled at them as they came in calling out, “Hi, Benji, how are you? I hope you’re a fan of pot pies because that’s what I’m attempting for dinner this evening. You are staying for dinner, right?”

“Oh, uh, sure. That sounds great.”

“Perfect. Were you planning on going out to the back field?” she asked Victor, who nodded. “Okay, make sure you’re back by six, and keep an eye out for that coyote in case it’s back again. The last thing I feel like doing this evening is taking anyone to the ER because they fell off a spooked horse.”

“Relax, _Mami_ , I promise we’ll be careful. We’ll probably spend half our time out in the pasture just teaching Benji how to ride anyway.”

Her eyes went wide. “You mean he’s never done it before? _Ay, dios mio_ , maybe I should go with you guys…”

It took Victor another several minutes to reassure his mom that he knew what he was doing with the horses and no one was likely to die or be severely maimed or anything, and then he and his siblings led Benji out to the corral where the horses were waiting. Teaching Benji to ride was really fun, especially since Benji seemed to have a natural affinity for animals and was able to immediately put Beau and even the more excitable Elsa at ease. After about an hour of messing around in the corral showing Benji the basics, Pilar and Adrian were starting to get restless, so Victor decided that they were probably ready to head out to the back field.

Pilar sat with Adrian in front of her on Elsa, and they passed out the gate first after Victor opened it for them. He turned back to Benji who was waiting patiently on Beau’s back, planning to walk alongside and guide him down the trail, but then the idea of riding together became too tempting and he found himself climbing up behind him. The saddle wasn’t really designed for two people so it was a pretty tight squeeze, but Benji didn’t seem to mind when Victor fit himself in against his back and rested his hands lightly on Benji’s hips.

Benji turned his head slightly, a flirty smile on his face as he said, “Howdy, cowboy.”

Victor stared into his warm brown eyes, his heart rate picking up, and he began to doubt the wisdom of getting this close to Benji when he was out with his brother and sister. He tried to scoot back a bit. “This might not have been my best idea ever.”

“Why, are you having a _hard_ time back there?”

“Oh my god,” Victor groaned, squeezing his eyes shut in embarrassment as Benji broke down laughing at his own terrible pun. “You’re the worst.”

“ _Victor, hurry up!_ ” Adrian shouted from a good ways ahead of them.

It took Benji a few attempts at pressing his knees into Beau’s sides before he managed to get the horse moving, but then they were finally headed out onto the trail behind Pilar and Adrian. The weather was just as sunny as it had been the day before, warm enough that Victor was comfortable in a t-shirt and jeans, and there were hints of spring beginning to pop up across the landscape. Vibrant green leaves were budding on the trees again, and he even spotted a few early Bluebonnets blooming bright among the tall, yellow grass.

Although he did have to adjust Benji’s grip on the reigns a couple of times, and help keep Beau away from the plants he was determined to stop and nibble on, Benji actually caught on pretty quickly. Maybe it was Benji's natural talent at dancing that had him settling into the rhythm of riding faster than most beginners did. The sunlight, and the warmth of Benji’s hips under his palms, and the steady movement of their bodies crossed over at some point from distracting to something almost meditative. Victor leaned into Benji’s back just a bit, resting his chin on his shoulder, and felt more relaxed than he could remember being for a very long time.

After nearly an hour they came to a small river winding its twisting way across the fields, so they all climbed down to give the horses a water break. Hanging out on the bank led to a stone skipping contest, which Pilar won just like she always did, and then Adrian found a huge bullfrog and nearly fell into the river trying to catch it. He ended up soaked from the knees down anyway, and at that point it seemed like a good idea to head back home again.

“How’d it go?” Isabel asked when the four of them trooped into the dining room a while later, kicking off their dusty shoes by the door. She frowned when she caught sight of Adrian. “What happened to him?”

“Someone tried to go Steve Irwin on a frog and nearly went head first into a river,” Pilar explained. She gestured down at her own jeans, shooting Victor a glare. “And guess who got stuck with his muddy little legs all over them on the way back.”

“I did offer to take a turn with him,” Victor said.

She smirked. “And deprive you of more cuddle time with your boyfriend? I wouldn’t dream of it.”

Just after Victor had finished getting Adrian cleaned up for dinner, there was a knock on the door. He went to answer it and was surprised to find his father standing outside.

“Oh, hey, _Papi_. I didn’t know you were coming over here tonight.”

Armando raised a large binder that he was holding in one hand. “Your little brother left his math worksheets in my car last week, and I figured I’d better bring it over before he gets anymore behind on his homework.”

“Oh, _gracias_ , I’ve been looking everywhere for that,” Isabel said, coming over to take it from him, which led to the two of them staring at each other awkwardly for a long moment.

“Well, I guess I should head back then-” Armando began to say, when Isabel suddenly interrupted him.

“Why don’t you stay for dinner? We were just about to sit down.”

“Oh, uh, I don’t know…”

The uncertainty on Armando’s face, and the way he was hovering in the doorway like he was nervous about stepping inside, had Victor’s heart aching. “Yeah, _Papi_ , it’d be cool if you stayed. We, uh – we missed seeing you today.”

A spark of hope lit up Armando’s eyes. “I missed you guys, too. Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind-”

Isabel nodded firmly. “Get in here. I made chicken pot pies, and it’s possible they might be a little overdone, but I’m pretty sure the gravy turned out good and obviously that’s the most important part. And, uh – I was going to open that nice bottle of wine Pamela gave us to celebrate my new job.”

“You got a job?” Armando echoed in surprise.

“I’ll be teaching piano lessons at an after school center in town,” Isabel explained proudly, although there was a hint of anxiety in the way she was waiting for Armando’s reaction.

“That sounds fantastic. Congratulations,” Armando said, sounding like he really meant it, and Isabel smiled brightly.

They all walked back to the dining room, where Benji was helping Adrian set the table. Armando froze as he caught sight of them together, and Victor’s heart stopped.

“Oh, hi, Mr. Salazar,” Benji said when he noticed them. He glanced nervously toward Victor, but all Victor could do was watch his father and wait.

Armando finally overcame his surprise and forced a tight smile. “Hi there. It’s nice to see you again.”

“You, too,” Benji said politely.

“ _Papi_!” Adrian squealed, bouncing over to wrap his arms around Armando’s middle. “We went out to the back field today, and we taught Benji how to ride, and I almost caught a bullfrog!”

“Wow, sounds like an action-packed day,” Armando commented.

A few minutes later they were seated around the table, Benji at Victor’s side, and all of his family gathered together for the first time in so long. The pie was a little bit burned at the edges, and Armando only managed a few brief exchanges with Benji during the meal, and there was an awkward moment when Isabel tried to offer Victor and Benji some of the wine. Victor turned it down, squeezing Benji’s hand under the table, and Benji gave him a small smile to show that he was okay. Although things weren’t really perfect, it felt like they might be headed in the right direction all the same.

His dad was here, and his mom was practically glowing when she described her new job, and Pilar and Adrian were telling stories about the horse riding lessons that afternoon. Victor threaded his fingers a little more tightly through Benji’s.

This was all of them getting better, one small step at a time.


	42. How I'm Gonna Live

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: brief mentions of violence, homophobia, internalized homophobia, and bullying.
> 
> The title for this chapter is from Scissor Sisters' "Everybody Wants the Same Thing".

Victor had been dreading going back to school the week that Teddy and his friends were returning, but first Monday had passed by without any sign of him, and then Tuesday and Wednesday, and still Victor hadn’t spotted Teddy even once. He’d run into the other three guys around campus, and every time he saw one of their faces it had been a major challenge to try to remember the anger management techniques that Jake had taught him, but fortunately Kieran, Mark, and Glenn all seemed just as dedicated to avoiding Victor as he was to avoiding them. Eventually Victor had to know what was going on, so he brought it up with some of his teammates when they were in the locker room after basketball practice on Thursday.

“Oh, dude, you didn’t hear?” Nate said. “Teddy’s parents are transferring him to a school over in Southlake. Him and his brother, Shawn. I heard Coach Simmons shed actual, honest-to-god tears when he got the news. He’s gonna have a hard time finding a new quarterback that’s even half as good as Shawn.”

Andrew shrugged dismissively. “Whatever. Like anyone’s really going to miss those assholes. Shawn was as big of a dick as Teddy, he was just better at not getting caught.”

The sense of relief Victor felt at hearing Teddy wasn’t coming back was so overwhelming that he jumped slightly in surprise when Damien leaned over and clapped a hand down on his shoulder. “Hey man, how’s your boyfriend doing?”

Victor glanced up at him sharply, his first thought being that Damien was trying to mess with him. Since Victor had come out, the team was gradually getting more comfortable around him, but it was still pretty rare that any of them directly mentioned him being gay. There was no sign of anything but genuine concern in Damien’s expression though, so Victor swallowed back his alarm and said, “Uh, he’s good. He didn’t really get hurt that badly.”

“Cool, I’m glad to hear that. What those guys did was seriously fucked up, dude. If anything like that ever happens again, you know we got your guys’ back,” Damien told him, squeezing his shoulder lightly before letting go.

“Thanks,” was all Victor said, since it was hard to keep his voice steady when Damien’s support had him suddenly feeling a little choked up.

He exhaled, long and slow, and felt some of the stress he’d been carrying around all week begin to fade. Teddy was leaving for good, which was the best thing he’d heard all day, and on top of that most of his teammates were accepting of him now. The locker room had always been a tense space for him, even before he came out, because he’d been so paranoid in the past that he would accidentally stare just a little too long at someone or do something else that would expose his secret. For the first time in years he finally found himself beginning to relax a little.

Across the room from them Matt had just finished changing, and he slammed his locker door shut loudly before leaving in a rush. He was one of the few guys on the team that was still acting weird around Victor. They hadn’t spoken in nearly two months now, and it bothered Victor sometimes how easily Matt had been able to walk away from years of friendship. He’d been tempted a few times to approach Matt and try to hash things out with him, but he’d realized that it wasn’t his job to do that. He hadn’t done anything wrong by coming out, and just because Victor’s natural instinct was always to keep others happy didn’t mean that that was something he needed to act on.

“Let him be the one to come to you and apologize,” Benji advised him when they were talking between periods later that day. “If he really values you as a friend, he’ll do it. And if not, then maybe he wasn’t someone worth being friends with in the first place. Sometimes that’s part of coming out, unfortunately. There are some people you end up losing, and you have to just let them go.”

“I won’t have any trouble letting Teddy go, anyway,” Victor said. “Thank god he’s transferring.”

“Yeah, seriously.”

Benji didn’t say anything more about it, but his relief was obvious. He’d been just as stressed out as Victor, if not more so, about seeing Teddy back at school that week. They had only talked about it once in the two weeks since the attack happened, but Victor knew that Benji had been more shaken up about it than he let most people see. He’d told Victor that he had nightmares sometimes about what would have happened if Jeremy and the teachers hadn’t shown up when they did. The thought of that – of what _could’ve_ happened – still haunted Victor, too.

“What about the other guys? Have any of them bothered you at all since they came back?”

Benji shook his head. “No, I’ve been fine. The only one of them I’ve talked to was Glenn. He came up to me in P. E. yesterday and actually apologized. He said Teddy and Kieran pressured him into doing it, which isn’t much of an excuse, but I guess it’s still nice that I got an apology from one of them.”

“It’s something, at least,” Victor agreed, somewhat bitterly.

Benji picked up on the anger in Victor’s voice and ran a hand briefly over his arm in a soothing gesture. The fact that _Benji_ felt the need to try and comfort _him_ made Victor feel a little guilty, so he took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down since he knew that was what Benji needed from him. Changing the topic, Benji said, “Oh, hey, did you ask Pilar if she’s coming to the film festival? I need to tell Dani how many tickets to reserve for our group.”

“She said she’ll be there. Honestly, I’m kind of surprised she’s still coming to all the GSA stuff. It’s cool that she wants to support me and all, but she’s never really been into doing anything extracurricular like this before.”

An amused, slightly knowing smile spread across Benji’s face. “I don’t know. I’m not sure she’s been coming just to support you…”

Victor frowned in confusion. “What does that mean?”

“Come on, you really haven’t noticed the way her and Anthony have been looking at each other ever since the first meeting? There’s definitely something going on there.”

For some reason, even though Victor had noticed that there was a tension between his sister and Anthony, it had never occurred to him that it might be _that_ kind of tension. He’d kind of assumed they’d gotten into a fight about something. He had actually tried to ask Pilar on a couple of occasions about how she knew Anthony, but she had brushed him off each time.

“You really think they like each other?” he asked. Just then the warning bell rang, so Benji grabbed some stuff out of his locker and closed the door.

“I’m pretty sure that’s what it is. I mean, I’m very familiar with the Salazar longing stare at this point, so…”

Victor let out an embarrassed laugh as Benji smiled at him fondly, and for a half a second he considered leaning forward and giving Benji a kiss. But the hallway was crowded, and people had only just started to finally chill out around them, so he was too nervous to tempt fate like that. He took Benji’s hand in his for a brief moment instead. “See you at lunch later.”

“Bye, V.”

On Saturday, when everyone from the GSA met up near the entrance of Brandon College, it became clear that Benji was probably right about what was going on with Anthony and Pilar. As soon as they arrived, she wandered over to say hi to him, and the two of them hung back as the group made its way across campus to the building where the film festival was taking place. They were walking close enough together that their arms kept brushing, and they quickly fell into a deep conversation. Pilar had never been the type to make friends easily, and it was rare to see her getting attached to someone so quickly. There definitely had to be something going on.

“Victor, quit being so nosy,” Benji told him, when Victor turned his head to look at them yet again.

“Pilar has it coming. Do you have any idea how nosy _she_ is? Remember the whole ‘B’ investigation? And stealing my phone to read our texts? And-”

Benji rolled his eyes. “So two wrongs make a right, is that it?”

“Okay, now you sound like my mom, so please stop,” Victor begged him.

“Whoah, sounds like you two are rapidly headed into the old married couple stage of the relationship,” Dani joked as she walked up to meet them. “I thought you guys had only been together for, like, three months.”

“We have,” Benji confirmed dryly. “Apparently that’s all it takes to get to the point where he’s comparing you to his mother.”

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’m pretty sure Jess was breaking out the mom comparisons even faster than that when we first got together. But I guess uhauling after only two weeks of dating will do that to you.”

“You’re like a walking cliché,” Benji laughed, as Dani shook her head ruefully.

“Tell me about it.”

Victor had no idea what they were talking about, and it must have shown, because Dani said, “It’s a lesbian thing – moving in together too fast. But me and Jess have been making it work for four years now, so I guess it doesn’t always end in disaster.”

“Is Jess gonna be here today?” Benji asked.

“No, she’s working, unfortunately. Oh, but I did hear that there was one more student from your GSA joining. Ms. Albright asked me to put another ticket aside for him last night.”

“Really? I didn’t know about that. Did she say who it was?”

“Some guy named Jeremy.”

Victor’s mouth dropped open. “No way. Jeremy is coming? _Here_?”

Benji looked equally shocked. “Well, I did invite him, but I really wasn’t expecting him to show up…”

They arrived at the large student center building where the concert Benji had attended last fall had taken place. It was weird to walk by the bench where Victor had kissed him for the first time and to realize how much things had changed since then. It already felt like it had all happened a lifetime ago.

Standing near the entrance was Jeremy, dressed all in black and gray like always, and fidgeting uncomfortably as though it was taking all of his strength to simply remain where he was. A big banner was hanging over the doors advertising the film festival, and there were already a decent number of people lined up in front of the tables where tickets were being sold.

Jeremy approached them nervously as they walked up to one of the tables. He seemed more comfortable making eye contact with Benji than Victor as he said hi to them.

“How have you been?” Victor asked him, surveying his face for any sign of his injuries. Even two weeks later there was still a faint shadow lingering around the bridge of Jeremy’s long nose, which was a little crooked now. But the black eye he’d received was long gone, and he seemed to be doing okay otherwise. Aside from how awkward and twitchy he was at the moment, he actually looked less miserable than Victor could ever remember him being.

“Fine,” Jeremy answered shortly. He glanced around the group, which included Ms. Albright, Maggie, Cora, Anthony, Pilar, Felix, Alicia, and one other guy, a senior named Patrick who had just recently joined the GSA. Some of them were shooting surprised or curious looks at Jeremy, which he seemed determined to ignore. “Is this everyone that’s coming?”

“Yep, this is it,” Benji said. “I’m really glad you decided to join us.”

Jeremy didn’t say anything in response to that. He just continued to look around, like he was worried about who might see him there. Victor wondered why he’d decided to come at all if he was so intensely nervous about it.

Although now that they were inside, Victor found that he couldn’t stop scanning the room over and over again, either, taking in every detail. The walls were covered in decorations for the festival, including everything from banners advertising the Queer Resource Center to pride flags to posters of the movies that would be screening. There were a few he recognized, mostly ones like _Brokeback Mountain_ that had been big enough to break into the mainstream, and so many more that he’d never heard of before. But even more eye-catching than the posters and decorations were the people that filled the room.

A few feet away from Victor, standing in the line, were a couple of guys who were holding hands. One of them looked like what Victor would imagine a gay guy to look like – tight t-shirt, muscular, short cropped hair, fashionable jeans – while the other one was someone that Victor never would have guessed might be queer if he’d just seen him out on the street somewhere. There was another man nearby in a light pink shirt that Victor kind of wanted for himself, and another in track pants and a hoodie who leaned over to give the similarly-dressed guy standing next to him a kiss like it was no big deal.

Growing up he’d always had this impression that gay guys tended to dress or act a certain way, but it was obvious from the variety of queer men in the room that that wasn’t the case. There were dozens of people here, including more same-sex couples than Victor had ever seen before in his life, and people who were dressed in styles that were masculine, or feminine, or something in between or outside of both.

For the last few years, Victor had tried to be so careful to make sure nothing about himself would reveal his own queerness. He’d worked hard to always dress in a nondescript way, copying whatever a lot of the other guys at school were wearing. But looking around the room now, he realized that he didn’t have to do that anymore. There was clearly no one way to be gay, and if Victor wanted to he could go out and get a pink shirt like the one he’d admired a moment ago, or he could stick with his jeans and hoodies, or anything else he felt like wearing because it didn’t really matter. He was out now to almost everyone in his life, so he could dress and act however he wanted to – there was nothing holding him back from looking just as openly gay as he liked, if that was what he felt like doing.

“Victor, are you okay?” Benji asked him. “You’ve been really quiet since we got here.”

He laughed, feeling slightly overwhelmed. “I’m good. It’s just… all of _this_. All of these _people_.”

For the first time in Victor’s entire life he was in a space where being queer was the norm. _Where he was part of the majority_. Where he could hold Benji’s hand, or kiss him right on the mouth without anyone even looking twice at them. Where he could dress however he wanted to or say whatever he wanted and no one would care. It was one of the most freeing things he’d ever experienced.

“It’s really cool. To be somewhere that we automatically fit in without having to hide or change anything about ourselves,” Victor explained. “To just be the normal ones for once.”

“I’m not sure anything about this is ‘normal’,” Jeremy muttered. Since they’d entered the building, he hadn’t spoken at all until that moment, just skulking along behind Victor and Benji like a tall, pale shadow.

Victor was feeling annoyed that Jeremy had found something to complain about yet again, but then Benji said, “Maybe not ‘normal’, exactly, the way everyone else defines it. But ‘normal’ for us. We don’t have to be afraid to let our guards down here.”

Jeremy swallowed hard, his eyes darting around like he was scared to look at anyone else in the room for too long. “Yeah. I, uh… I still don’t really know how to do that.”

“Just try to relax, okay? You’ll be fine,” Benji said, smiling patiently at him, and Victor’s annoyance instantly vanished. Even now that he’d known Benji for awhile, the depths of Benji’s kindness and ability to empathize with others continued to surprise him.

A few minutes later they had received their passes to the festival and a booklet with the schedule in it. Benji was looking over the list of films when Victor suddenly cupped the side of Benji’s face and kissed him.

“What was that for?” Benji asked, grinning, as Victor pulled back a moment later.

“Just for being a really awesome person,” Victor told him. He felt a little embarrassed then by his display of emotion and said, “Uh, so what do you want to watch first?”

“I’ve already watched a lot of these, so you can pick something.”

Near them, Felix was scanning over the schedule, muttering, “Seen it, seen it, hmm, yep, seen that one, too…”

“You’ve seriously seen _Call Me By Your Name_?” Benji asked incredulously. “That movie was fifty percent sexual tension and fifty percent _actual_ sex scenes. I watched it with my ex last year and we had to pause it, like, three times to – uh – you know what, never mind…”

Victor was extremely grateful Benji didn’t finish that sentence.

“ _And_ it has great acting, a gorgeous soundtrack, and stunning cinematography,” Felix pointed out, steering the conversation back onto safer ground. “Not to brag, but I do pride myself on being something of a film buff. Also, part of the work I’ve been doing to be a better ally has been consuming more LGBTQ media. So yeah, I’ve already watched about half of the stuff on this list.”

“All right everyone,” Ms. Albright called out, “you’re free to go watch whatever you like, although I am required to remind you that you’re only allowed to see the rated R stuff if you gave me a signed permission form. Have fun, kiddos, if you need me I’ll be in room three laughing and crying my way through _Rent_ for the millionth time.”

The first three options on the list were _Rent_ , _But I’m a Cheerleader_ , and _Carol_. Victor wasn’t really a fan of musicals, and the description of _Carol_ made it sound like it might be kind of depressing, so in the end he decided to go with option number two.

“Ooh, we’ll join you guys,” Maggie said. “I have such a huge crush on Natasha Lyonne.”

“No way, the one you want to be checking out in this movie is Clea DuVall,” Cora argued.

Maggie wrinkled her nose. “Isn’t she basically the same age as your mom?”

“Yeah, well, how old do you think Natasha Lyonne is? Anyway, she was young when she made this movie so-”

The argument over which lead actor was the hottest continued as the four of them plus Jeremy went to buy some drinks and snacks (in the end Benji sided with Cora which sparked a new debate over whether or not as a gay guy his opinion should be counted). The movie was a little dated but still really entertaining, and Victor liked the way it played around with stereotypes about gender and sexuality. More than that, though, he enjoyed just getting to sit in a room full of people who were like him, watching a movie he could identify with in a lot of ways, while he had his boyfriend tucked up under his arm. Maggie and Cora seemed to be having a great time as well, although he wasn’t sure how much of the movie they actually watched with all the time they spent cuddling and exchanging kisses. Victor even caught Jeremy laughing once or twice, and he realized it was probably the first time he’d ever seen him laugh in a way that wasn’t spiteful or mocking.

They had time to watch a couple more movies after that one, with little breaks in between to hang out and talk with some of the other people from their group. He liked everything they watched, but honestly even if the movies had sucked it still would have been one of the best days of Victor’s life. The feeling of being part of something bigger, of being so connected with the people around him and the stories that were being told in each film, made him feel like he was riding high all day long, a bubbly, elated, undeniable happiness that he just couldn’t get enough of.

 _These are my people_ , Victor thought, as he looked around at the crowd in between films _._ People of all genders, all races and ethnicities, passing by speaking English or Spanish or other languages he didn’t recognize, with all kinds of clothes and hairstyles and ways of being. They were so completely different from each other and yet they somehow fit together so well, creating a noisy, lively, celebratory atmosphere that filled the entire room with energy. _This is_ my _community._

At one point, he, Benji, and Jeremy wandered outside to get some fresh air. Victor knew that Jeremy had been following them around all day because he was nervous, and Victor was trying his best not to feel irritated by it. Even so, it was awkward hanging out with Jeremy, especially when Benji left for the bathroom. He frantically searched his brain for something to talk about and kept coming up blank. They’d already discussed what they thought of the last movie, and Victor didn’t want to bring up any old drama from school or Jeremy’s family situation, and what else was left after that?

Just as Victor opened his mouth to make some stupid comment about the weather, Jeremy blurted out, “I’m sorry.”

“What?”

Jeremy stared down at this hands, his whole body practically vibrating with tension. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, “for what I did to you. For threatening to out you, and all the shitty stuff I said, and – and basically for all of it. I’m really sorry.”

“Oh.” Victor had never expected to get an apology from Jeremy, so his surprise had him feeling a little wrong-footed. “Um.”

“It’s okay if you don’t want to forgive me. You don’t have to. I know I don’t deserve it.” Jeremy’s hands were clenched into fists so tight his knuckles had gone pale and bloodless. He wouldn’t look at Victor as he said, “I did all that stuff because trying to hate you was easier than admitting the truth, which was that the person I really hated was myself. And I was jealous, too. Not just because I, uh – because I liked you, but also because of the ways that you were making your life better. You were doing all the things that I wished I could do. Finding a boyfriend, coming out to everyone, getting to be so… confident in who you are. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to do any of that, and I resented you for it.”

“But you actually can do that stuff now, if you want to,” Victor pointed out.

Jeremy nodded slowly. “Yeah. I guess I can. I don’t really know where to start, though.”

Victor gestured around them. “I think you just do stuff like this. You find places where you can be yourself, and people who accept you. You learn how to replace all the negative, hateful voices in your head with self-love.”

“That sounds sappy as fuck,” Jeremy complained. “Am I going to have to start being kind to baby animals and talking about my emotions, too?”

“Probably,” Victor said, laughing. “There’s no way me and Benji can be friends with you if you’re mean to baby animals.”

Jeremy’s head shot up, his eyes going wide as they finally met Victor’s. It took Victor a second to realize what had surprised him so much.

“I do forgive you, Jeremy,” Victor told him. “And I think we can try to be friends now, if you want to be.”

There was a long moment of silence while Jeremy processed that, but then one side of his mouth curled up just a little. “Yeah. That’d be really cool.”

Victor wasn’t sure if it was okay to ask, but he’d spent the last two weeks wondering about it and he might not get another chance like this. So he said, “Why did you do it?”

Jeremy didn’t have to ask what he meant.

“I thought it was you, at first,” Jeremy answered in a voice so low Victor had to lean forward a little to hear him. “When I came out of the gym, I heard what those guys were saying to him, and I knew right away that they were gay bashing. I assumed it was you they were beating up and I just ran back there without really thinking about why I was doing it. But even when I saw it was Benji I didn’t stop. I didn’t _want_ to stop. I was too fucking angry, and too tired of being scared all the damn time, and maybe part of me also knew that if they hurt him that would hurt you, and I didn’t want to let them do that.”

The confession left Victor speechless. What could he even say to all of that? The truth was that he’d never really liked Jeremy, not as a friend and definitely not as anything more than that, and although he was willing to try the former now, he wasn’t sure how to be friends with someone who apparently cared about him so much more than he cared for them. He didn’t know how to respond, so he focused instead on the part that had been plaguing him the most.

“Me and Benji haven’t talked about what happened much. I think that the more something bothers him, the less he wants to talk about it, so I haven’t really brought it up. But I can’t stop thinking about it, all the time. About what those guys would have done to him if you hadn’t run in there. About _why_ they did it. It’s not like we’ve ever done anything to them or given them any reason to hate us other than the fact that we just exist in the same school that they do. So _why_? Where does all that hatred come from?”

“Hate comes from hate, violence from violence. It’s like a Hydra, you cut one head off and two more pop up and it never fucking dies. Some people turn their hate inward and hurt themselves, and for other people it’s easier to just find someone else to hate.” Jeremy’s eyes cut over to Victor as he said this, a self-deprecating facsimile of a smile turning up his mouth. “Either way, someone always has to suffer for it.”

Teddy hurt others because his family hurt him. But the cycle wasn’t just restricted to the homophobic bullies of the world. Jeremy had chosen to hurt Victor, Victor had let his own internalized homophobia hurt Mia, and Benji had hurt himself nearly to the point of serious injury or possibly even death when he’d gotten drunk and crashed his dad’s car. _Someone always had to suffer._

“So how do you stop it? How do you kill the, uh – what was that thing?”

“The Hydra. Big monster with lots of heads. From Greek mythology? Never mind. I don’t know the answer to that. I guess that’s what I have to start figuring out now.”

“Pretty sure that’s what we’re all trying to figure out,” Victor agreed.

“This is probably where the baby animals and Kumbaya’s come in, isn’t it. Fuck, when did my life turn into a freaking Lifetime movie? And not even a very good one, Jesus…”

“Whose life is a Lifetime movie?” Benji asked as he walked up to join them. He’d been gone a while, so Victor was guessing he must have gotten side-tracked talking with other people on his way back. He was smiling, and his hair was doing that swoopy thing it did when he’d been running his hand through it too much, hanging loose and soft around his eyes, and he looked so happy just then. As Benji settled in close beside him on the bench, Victor realized that he already knew the answer to the many-headed monster problem.

“Jeremy’s life, apparently,” Victor said, in response to Benji’s question. “He’s gonna be all about the Kumbaya’s and long walks on the beach and heartfelt chats from now on. I heard they’re handing out Kleenex in room three, Jeremy, just in case you feel like a good cry might be in your near future.”

“Fuck you,” Jeremy said, but he was laughing a little as he said it, and the tiny smile from earlier was making a reappearance.

After the festival that night, Victor and Pilar were on their way home in the truck when Victor’s curiosity finally got the better of him.

“Okay, what’s going on with you and Anthony? And don’t tell me it’s nothing again because it’s obviously something,” Victor said in a rush before Pilar could give him one of her usual brush-off’s.

“Ugh, fine. It might be… something.”

“Cool, that really clears it up,” Victor said, rolling his eyes. “So does that mean you guys are dating now? And how did you know each other before the GSA got started?”

Pilar looked a little reluctant to divulge any details, but Victor stared her down for longer than he probably should have while driving, and she finally gave in (possibly to save them both from imminent death). “All right, remember that date I went on back in January? The really shitty one?”

“The one you said was a total waste of time and make up?”

“Yep. Well, I went out with Anthony for the first time that night.”

“That was _him?_ ”

“Yeah. We met at my friend Sam’s house ‘cause Anthony is friends with her older brother, and he seemed really cool, so when he asked me on a date later I said yes. But there may have been a _tiny little_ misunderstanding when we were at dinner that night, which _might_ have ended in me throwing a virgin margarita at him and running out of the restaurant…”

“Wait, _what?_ What could he have possibly said that would make you throw a drink at him?”

“We were talking about you coming out and he made this comment about how there were way more ‘queers’ at school than he’d imagined. I just assumed he was using that word in an insulting way and freaked out, and I guess maybe I didn’t really give him a chance to explain because I just started yelling at him and throwing stuff right away…”

“Oh, _Pilar_ …”

“But in my defense I’d been hearing people say shitty stuff for weeks at that point and I was maybe feeling _slightly_ on edge because of it. Anyway, we saw each other again at the GSA and obviously he wouldn’t have been there if he really was a huge bigot, so I realized I must have misunderstood him.”

“Maggie said you got in a fight with a guy in your homeroom class because of something he said about me, too.”

Pilar crossed her arms over her chest defensively. “Yeah, well, I’m not just going to let some homophobe talk shit about my brother, okay?”

Victor sighed. “I appreciate you wanting to defend my honor or whatever, but please don’t get into any more fights because of me. All right?”

“Fine. Unless Teddy shows his face in Brandon again, and then I can’t be held responsible for my actions.”

Victor silently agreed with her on that one. “So anyway, does this mean that you guys are together now?”

“Not yet… but we’re going out again tomorrow night. So we’ll see.”

“Just try not to throw anything at him this time,” Victor laughed. “God, I can’t believe you did that. I thought that kind of thing only happened on soap operas.”

“You should try it sometime, it’s surprisingly satisfying. I’m never allowed back at that TGI Friday’s, though.”

“Ugh, he took you to a TGI Friday’s on your first date? He seemed like he’d have better taste than that.”

“Wow, stuck up much? It was my idea, actually, I wanted wings.”

“You wanted _wings_? Who _are_ you?”

Pilar shook her head at him. “You know, you’ve gotten a lot more dramatic since you came out.”

“Whatever, I have not,” Victor protested. He pulled the truck into their driveway, but didn’t get out right away. He doubted that he was any more dramatic than he used to be, but _this –_ this easy banter with his little sister – was definitely something that had only started after he’d come out. It was really nice that they could talk like this now, like they were friends rather than just people who lived together and were sometimes obligated to talk to each other as a result.

“Hey, what time is your date tomorrow?” he asked.

“Anthony’s picking me up at six, why?”

“Wanna go shopping with me in the afternoon?”

Pilar stared at him like he was completely insane. “ _Shopping?_ ”

Victor shrugged, trying to play it casual even though he was a little nervous that he was taking this whole friends with his sister thing too far. “Yeah. Uh. I was kind of thinking of picking out some new clothes, and you’re always complaining that the stuff I wear is boring, so maybe you can help me find something different.”

His sister continued to stare at him like he’d been speaking in tongues. She narrowed her eyes and leaned back against the passenger door. “You’re telling me that you want me to go clothes shopping with you tomorrow.”

“…Yes.”

“Just the two of us.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“ _Why?_ ”

He let out an anxious breath and forced himself to explain. “All right, look. You told me before that my clothes make me look repressed… and maybe you were right. When we were at the festival today I realized that for years now I’ve just been wearing stuff that helps me blend in, and the really depressing thing is that’s what my whole life has been like. My hobbies and my clothes and my hair and the way I talk and, I don’t know, everything about me feels like stuff I chose just because it’s what other guys liked. Or it’s what I thought Mom and Dad wanted me to like. But I don’t have to do that anymore, and now I want to start figuring out who I really am. What kind of stuff I’m actually into. Does that make sense?”

“And you want to start with clothes?” Pilar asked, incredulously. “What are we talking about here? You wanna get some skin-tight pants and sparkly shirts? Maybe an outfit for the leather scene? Or are you thinking you might be more of a bow-tie and blazer kind of gay?”

“Please never mention the leather scene to me ever again,” Victor pleaded, his cheeks going hot, and Pilar started cracking up at her own stupid joke. “I just want to figure out what I like, okay? Do you want to help me or not?”

Pilar grinned. “Yeah, all right. Let’s do it.”

Shopping the next day with Pilar was a strange experience. It was fun and surprisingly liberating trying on a lot of stuff he normally never would’ve even considered, but it was stressful, too. Putting your true self on display was an incredibly vulnerable and scary experience, and in a weird way opening the changing room curtain to show Pilar a purple jacket and a pair of hip-hugging, distressed jeans felt almost as nerve-wracking as coming out all over again.

His collection of hoodies, loose blue jeans, and slightly baggy shirts, all of them in acceptable masculine colors like green, blue, gray, and brown had been a part of his mask for such a long time that he’d almost started to believe that they were part of the real him. But they weren’t. They were more of a crutch than anything, something he’d needed once but which was now holding him back. He wanted to root out everything like that in his life, one piece at a time, and replace it with the things that made him stronger, that made him himself.

In each store they went in he let Pilar toss a wide assortment of clothes at him until he reached the limit of what he was allowed to try on, and then he tried all of it. Even the stuff he was pretty sure he hated, just because he wanted to be open to everything at the moment.

But there was one thing he grabbed for himself, even though it made Pilar raise her brows at him a little in surprise, and when he tried it on he knew it was perfect.

“Looking good, _hermano_ ,” Pilar said, giving him one of her teasing smirks, but there was real warmth in her eyes. “That’s a good color on you.”

“Yeah, I think so, too,” Victor agreed as he smoothed his hands over the light-pink fabric of the t-shirt. It ended up being one of the first things he bought that day.


	43. Let the Roots Run Deep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: mild racism and homophobia, discussion of alcoholism
> 
> This chapter title comes from the song "Crowded Table" by The Highwomen.

Spring Break was getting closer, so Victor finally gathered up the courage to ask his mom for permission to go on the Hill Country trip with his friends. Isabel’s initial reaction had been a hard no, since she barely knew Lake or her family, but he spent the following week begging and wheedling and sucking up to her in whatever way he could – he made _a ton_ of banana pancakes – and finally by the following Friday she caved.

“Okay, fine, your father and I decided that you may go, but _only_ if you swear to me that you will be safe and responsible the entire time,” Isabel said sternly. “I had a talk with Amelia and we called up this uncle of Lake’s last night. He’s going to be keeping a close eye on things and will let us know immediately about any unacceptable behavior, which to be clear means no drugs and no booze. If I hear that anything like that is going on, I will come down there and drag you home myself, got it?”

“Yes, _Mami_. Don’t worry, I promise to be responsible,” Victor said, as earnestly as he could. He couldn’t believe that she had actually said yes, and that apparently Amelia was allowing Benji to go as well. A huge grin spread across his face just before he threw his arms around her in a hug. “Thank you so much!”

“You’re welcome, _querido_.” She gave him a warm smile. “Oh, you’re going over to the Campbells’ tomorrow for Amelia’s birthday, right? I’m going to make her some lemon bars this evening, so don’t forget to take them with you.”

Pilar wandered into the kitchen then and gave Victor an amused smirk. “Dinner with the in-laws, huh? Make sure you dress nice.”

Something in his face must have given him away, because she laughed and said, “You’ve already planned out what you’re going to wear, haven’t you.”

Victor bit his lip guiltily which just made Pilar laugh even harder.

“Says the girl that spent nearly _three hours_ in the bathroom getting ready for her date last weekend,” Isabel pointed out dryly. She gave Victor an appraising look. “And I for one am loving the new clothes, Victor. That color really suits you.”

“Thanks,” Victor said quietly, feeling a little shy about it. He hadn’t quite worked his way up to the pink shirt yet, but the salmon one he had on that day was sort of headed in that direction.

“It is a relief to see you in something other than jeans and a hoodie. Maybe when you’ve fully graduated out of your boring, closeted-Victor clothes we can take them all out back and have a bonfire,” Pilar joked.

“Only if we get to throw your Satanic band shirts in with them,” Isabel shot back, which naturally led directly into a Pilar-Isabel shouting match until Victor distracted them both with a movie suggestion and a large bowl of popcorn.

Victor had agreed to come over around one on Saturday in order to help Benji cook some big British style roast dinner for Amelia, but he ended up being nearly thirty minutes late because of a minor emergency involving Beau that morning. When he arrived, Benji opened the door covered in streaks of flour, his hair a mess, looking more stressed out than Victor had possibly ever seen him before.

“Hi,” Benji said somewhat tersely, already rushing back toward the kitchen as Victor took his shoes off. Judging by the quiet house and lack of cars in the driveway, no one else seemed to be home at the moment.

“Sorry I’m late. Uh, is everything okay?” Victor asked as he followed after Benji.

He paused in surprise when he caught sight of the kitchen where Benji was rushing around with a broom and dustpan attempting to clean up a truly epic mess. There were mixing bowls, measuring cups, and various baking ingredients cluttering the space, and flour covering an impressively broad expanse of the counter tops and floor.

“What happened in here?” Victor asked as he searched for and finally found a clear spot to set down his mom’s lemon bars.

Without pausing in his sweeping, Benji explained, “I’m trying to make the cake, and I went to open a new package of flour, but the bag wouldn’t open at first, and I must have pulled too hard on it because it just exploded _everywhere_ , and if I don’t get this thing in the oven in the next ten minutes then I’m going to end up behind on everything else, and-”

“Okay, here, let me take care of that,” Victor said, taking the broom away. “You focus on finishing the cake and I’ll handle this.”

“Thanks,” Benji said, giving him a brief, grateful smile before dropping down to dig through one of the cupboards. “Shit,” he swore, emerging a moment later with a nearly empty paper bag in his hand. “This is all the flour we have left now. It might be just barely enough for the cake, but I’m going to need more for the other stuff-”

“Look, just take a deep breath, everything’s going to be fine,” Victor reassured him. “As soon as I finish cleaning this up, I can go out and buy some more flour and anything else you need. All right?”

Benji exhaled loudly, running a hand through his hair and unknowingly streaking more flour through it. Victor tried not to smile at how cute he looked.

“Okay, sorry, I know I’m freaking out. I’m just stressed about Isaac and Tammy coming. They’re going to be here any minute now and I don’t want them to see what a huge disaster this is turning into.”

“It’s not a disaster, it’s just a little flour on the floor. You finish the cake, and I’ll go to the store, and we’ll work this out.”

Benji grabbed him by the front of the shirt and pulled him into a quick kiss. “Thanks, V. Love you.”

It was hard to say whether it was the kiss, or the casual “love you”, or the combination of both that had Victor’s heart skipping a beat, but whatever it was Victor was glad when Benji went right back to work on the cake and spared him the temptation of wanting to drag Benji back into another, far more distracting, kiss.

By the time Victor made it back from the store with the flour and a few other things, the cake was in the oven and Benji was at least fractionally calmer than he had been earlier, although that wasn’t really saying much. He was banging around in a cupboard when Victor came in, trying to extricate a large rectangular baking pan from underneath a pile of other stuff. Victor left the groceries he’d picked up on the dining room table and went to help wash some of the dishes.

“When is everyone supposed to get here?” Victor asked.

“Tammy and Isaac’s flight was scheduled to arrive at twelve thirty, so they should be here really soon. I’m not sure when my parents will be back. Mum’s coworkers invited them out for a birthday brunch thing, but I think they’ll probably be home in an hour or two.” Benji grabbed a large cut of beef out of the fridge and placed it on a rack in the baking pan, then checked something on his phone. “Crap, this says you’re supposed to let it sit at room temperature for an hour or two first so it cooks more evenly.”

“Maybe it’ll be okay anyway?”

“Let’s hope so,” Benji muttered as he began to rub it down with salt and pepper.

“What can I help with?”

Benji handed over his phone. “Could you maybe do the filling for the cake? The recipe’s here.”

“Sure.” Victor began poking around, pulling out the stuff he would need. “Where’s the butter?”

“On the end of the counter over there by the fridge.”

“Are you sure? I don’t see it here…”

Benji glanced over his shoulder, nodding with his chin. “Just there, behind the – _shit_!”

“What’s wrong?” Victor rushed over to him, and was alarmed to see that Benji’s right hand was covered in blood, which was dripping all over the garlic he’d been slicing, a small red pool of it standing out starkly against the white cutting board. Victor took hold of Benji’s wrist gently and was about to lead him over to the sink when the sound of the front door opening startled them both.

“Hello, where is everyone? Benji, you here?” a voice called out from the living room, and then a moment later a guy who clearly had to be Isaac entered the kitchen. He looked a lot like Benji, except taller and heavier built, his hair cut shorter and his face a bit longer and more angular like Mike’s. He was definitely good looking, but because of his resemblance to Benji, Victor couldn’t stop comparing the two of them and finding Benji’s eyes a little warmer, Benji’s lips fuller, Benji’s shorter stature and slimmer build more appealing to him. He felt himself flush as he realized he’d just been standing there staring and thinking about really stupid stuff while Benji’s finger was bleeding all over the place and none of them said anything.

Isaac broke the silence after another second of looking around the kitchen in shock. “I don’t know if it looks more like the set of _I Love Lucy_ in here or a crime scene. What the hell happened?”

“Nothing, I just accidentally cut my finger a second ago. Everything’s fine,” Benji said shortly. He pulled away from Victor and walked over to the sink to rinse his hand off.

“I just left my bags in the living room for now, honey, I hope that’s okay.”

A woman with fair skin and long wavy hair appeared beside Isaac. They were both dressed nicely, Isaac in a button up shirt and slacks and the woman Victor assumed must be Tammy wearing an expensive looking light blue dress that had to be a designer brand. The two of them appeared effortlessly well-off and attractive in a blond, all-American way, like they should be on one of those promotional posters for a fancy Ivy League college. Victor and Benji, meanwhile, were covered in flour and in Benji’s case blood, both of them still in jeans and t-shirts for cooking, and a bit of Benji’s hair was sticking up at an odd angle in the back from one of the many times he’d anxiously run his hand through it.

“Oh my, is everything all right?” Tammy asked in a slow southern drawl, frowning in concern at the sight of the bloody cutting board.

“I’m fine, it’s just a little cut,” Benji said. He was holding a paper towel against his finger now and smiling tightly at his brother and Tammy. “It’s great you guys could make it for this. Was the flight okay?”

“Yeah, I mean, it was so short I barely had time to finish my peanuts before we were landing,” Isaac joked. He walked forward, extending his hand. “You must be Victor. It’s nice to meet you in person.”

“Yeah, you too.” Victor tried to discreetly wipe his palm against his jeans to make sure it was clean before shaking Isaac’s. He smiled politely and then reached out his own hand toward Tammy. “Hi, I’m Victor, Benji’s boyfriend.”

“Tammy,” she responded, her fingers closing around his for the briefest of moments before pulling quickly away again. Her answering smile was tight-lipped and strained. Turning back to Isaac, she said, “Hon, I’m just going to go wash up real quick. Be back in a sec.”

She disappeared down the hallway, and Benji began rummaging around in a drawer near the fridge until he found a Band-aid for his finger. As soon as he had it wrapped up he got back to work, cleaning up the dirty cutting board and preparing the beef, as if his brother wasn’t still standing there a few feet away in the middle of the room.

Isaac ran his gaze over the cluttered counters with a frown. “But seriously, are you guys actually doing all the cooking yourselves? Is Dad sick or something?”

“Dad’s fine. He’s just out with Mum at the moment. I wanted to do the cooking this year as part of my birthday gift to her.”

“Uh, Benji, what’s that smell?” Victor asked, suddenly becoming aware of a faintly burnt odor in the air. “Did you set a timer for the cake?”

Benji swore loudly and rushed over to the oven, grabbing a towel and pulling the extremely brown cake out before dropping it down on the stove with a clatter. He stood there leaning over it, every line of his body taut with tension, while Victor and Isaac just watched awkwardly for a few seconds without saying anything.

Eventually Victor approached him and put a cautious hand on Benji’s shoulder, which instantly sagged in defeat.

“It’s ruined,” Benji muttered. “We should just throw it out. I’ll give you some money to go pick something else up in town.”

“Uh, I can pop out and grab something if you want,” Isaac offered, clearly trying to be helpful, but Victor felt Benji already beginning to tense up again under his hand.

Victor surveyed the cake, which was a deep brown but not actually that badly burnt. “I don’t know, I think I might be able to salvage it. I’ve definitely gotten my mom out of worse baking catastrophes than this. We can just scrape off a bit of the top layer, and once you put the frosting on it no one will even be able to tell.”

Benji sighed. “It’s a Victoria Sponge. You’re not supposed to frost the whole thing.”

“Just tell her I thought it needed extra fat and sugar. This is America, it’s not a birthday cake if it doesn’t have ten pounds of frosting slathered all over it,” Victor joked, and Benji huffed out a small laugh that had Victor smiling in relief. Victor gave his shoulder a little squeeze and walked over to the oven. “What temperature should it be for the roast?”

“Three seventy-five.”

They got back to work, Benji finishing the preparation of the beef and placing it in the oven while Victor got started on the frosting for the cake.

“Nice save,” Isaac murmured in a low voice as he walked past Victor. In a louder tone he asked, “Anything I can help with?”

“No, we’re good,” Benji answered.

“You sure? It’s a lot of work, putting together the whole dinner and the dessert and everything. Tammy won’t mind if I help out.”

“I said we’ve got it. You guys should just chill, you only got here, like, ten minutes ago.” There was an edge of annoyance to Benji’s voice that seemed to be getting worse the longer Isaac hovered nearby.

“Okay. Well, let me know if you change your mind.”

Isaac wandered off to the living room where he and Tammy ended up sitting on the sofa and chatting while they watched a football game, and Victor and Benji spent the next hour or so putting together various dishes in the kitchen. Victor’s family didn’t really eat a lot of stuff like this, but he did his best to follow Benji’s instructions on what to do with brussels sprouts or how to season mashed potatoes. There weren’t any more big mishaps, which was a relief, but Benji remained quiet and tense, especially any time that Isaac or Tammy came out to the kitchen to get a drink.

Victor wished he could say something to help Benji relax, but it was clear from the way Benji was rushing around and avoiding conversation that he didn’t feel like talking. Simply being there and getting stuff done seemed to be calming Benji down the most, so Victor worked along side him quietly, and they fell into their usual rhythm of moving easily around each other just like they did at the cafe.

“Ooh, it smells lovely out here,” Amelia said when she and Mike returned home. The kitchen was still a mess – as were Victor and Benji – but she just smiled as she came in, giving Victor a hug and Benji a peck on the cheek. “What are these? They look amazing.”

“They’re lemon bars, from my mom,” Victor explained. “She says hi and happy birthday from all of us.”

“That’s so kind of her. And thank you for this, I can’t wait to see what you two have put together out here.”

“It should be ready in about ten or fifteen minutes,” Benji told her. “There’s some iced tea and crackers and stuff in the living room. You guys can wait out there and we’ll let you know when it’s done.”

Victor started setting the table while Benji worked on the last dish, something called a Yorkshire pudding that was apparently not a pudding at all but confusingly some kind of bread roll. He put a muffin tin filled with oil in the oven to heat up, and when he removed it again a short while later a huge cloud of black smoke burst out, immediately setting off the fire alarm overhead.

“Everything okay out there?” Mike shouted from the living room over the deafening noise of the alarm.

“It’s fine, just a bit of smoke,” Benji yelled back in between coughs. He rushed over to the stove to set down the tray and began hurriedly spooning batter into it while waving the smoke away with his free hand. Victor ran over to the window over the sink and opened it in order to let in some much needed fresh air.

The tray went back in the oven again and then Benji dragged a chair out to the middle of the room and climbed on top of it to shut off the alarm.

“Need some help with that, shorty?” Isaac teased as he came out to refill his glass of water.

“I’ve got it,” Benji snapped, shooting his brother an irritated look as he held the button down and finally silenced the constant, high-pitched wailing noise.

“Yikes, I’m just messing with you. Someone’s in a mood today.”

Benji stoically ignored his brother until Isaac rolled his eyes and disappeared to the living room again. They finished setting the table and carrying all of the dishes over to it, and then all that was left was to wait for the pudding things to be finished.

“Hey, everything looks amazing,” Victor said, running his hand down Benji’s arm as they leaned back against the counter for a brief moment of rest. Victor’s feet were aching after nearly three hours of cooking and he seriously couldn’t wait to sit down and eat. “Your mom’s going to love it.”

“The cake’s probably dry from being over-baked, the gravy’s too salty, the room stinks of smoke…” Benji sighed heavily. “I don’t know why I thought I could do all this. I should’ve just let my dad do it like every other year.”

“This isn’t _MasterChef_ , you don’t have to be perfect, okay? And I’m serious, everything looks really good. Just try to relax and enjoy the time with your family. Why don’t you go get changed for dinner and I’ll wait for the Cheshire pudding?”

“Yorkshire,” Benji corrected him, a small, amused smile breaking through his exhaustion.

“Right. Yorkshire, Cheshire, whatever,” Victor said, laughing and pushing Benji toward the hallway.

Benji returned a short while later, just as Victor was removing the Yorkshire puddings from the oven. He’d changed into a nice pair of dark gray slacks and a green button up shirt that made his eyes look more hazel than brown, and his hair was now as perfectly styled as it usually was with no traces of flour left. He looked distractingly handsome, and Victor froze for a moment with the muffin tin in his hand as he looked him over.

“Please put that down before you burn yourself,” Benji told him as he crossed the distance between them. Victor did as he was asked, and had just barely turned back around before Benji was cupping the side of his face and drawing him down into a kiss. He pulled back after a moment but stayed close, leaning into Victor’s space and pressing their foreheads together.

“Thank you,” Benji murmured, “I don’t think I could have done any of this without you.”

Victor was about to reply when a startled voice had them pulling away from each other in surprise.

“Oh, sorry,” Tammy said, her eyes wide, and then her lips flattened into a tight line. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“It’s okay,” Benji said, taking a step back from Victor to put more space between them. Tammy wasn’t looking at them anymore, her eyes fixed on the far wall. “Everything’s ready now, if you want to let the others know.”

“Oh, sure,” she said, and rushed away to the living room again.

“What’s up with her?” Victor asked.

Benji shook his head, a look of frustration on his face. “I don’t know. This is how she was at Thanksgiving, too, after she found out about the gay thing, and the alcohol thing, and all of it. I was hoping she’d have gotten over it by now, but I guess not.”

“That really sucks.” Victor sighed.

“Yeah. But let’s not worry about it right now.”

“I’m gonna go get changed real quick,” Victor said, picking up the bag of spare clothes that he’d brought with him. He ran his eyes over Benji one more time before he left. “You look great, by the way.”

Benji smiled and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thanks.”

Everyone had made their way out to the dining room by the time Victor returned. He stepped into the room nervously, trying not to tug on the sleeves of the new shirt he was wearing. Ever since his shopping trip with Pilar a week ago, he’d been slowly trying out one new item at a time, working his way up to some of the stuff that was a little bolder than he was ready for yet. But the outfit he was wearing now was the biggest leap so far – slim-fitting black jeans and a dark teal button up shirt with a small, tropical floral print in white and blue, the sleeves rolled up slightly and a couple of buttons undone at the collar. The material was a cotton blend but it had a smooth, heavy feel to it that he liked, and he could tell by the way Benji’s eyes widened slightly as he walked toward the table that it looked good on him. In fact, Benji was staring to the point that it was doing things to Victor’s heart rate and making his cheeks feel warm, and Victor had to break eye contact before he got any more worked up in front of Benji’s entire family.

“You look _really_ good in that shirt,” Benji leaned over to whisper when Victor took the seat next to him.

“Thanks,” Victor whispered back and hoped no one else would notice how flustered he was.

For the first five minutes or so, the dinner went well. Mike gave a little toast to Amelia’s birthday, they all passed around the dishes that Victor and Benji had cooked, and the conversation was light. But as they cut into the beef, it became clear that the center was rare to the point of being extremely bloody, so Mike began trying to awkwardly cut slices from the sides instead while Benji stared fixedly down at the table in embarrassment. It soon became apparent that Benji had been right about the gravy being too salty, and unfortunately the Yorkshire puddings had an acrid taste after being baked in an oven filled with smoke from the overly hot oil. Everyone continued eating politely and making nice comments about the dishes that hadn’t turned out awful, like the potatoes and brussels sprouts, but even so Benji was getting more and more withdrawn as the meal continued.

Victor had just finished answering some of Isaac and Mike’s questions about how the basketball season had been going, when Tammy gave him one of her tight smiles and asked, “So Victor, where are you from?”

“Here,” Victor answered, “I’ve lived in Brandon my whole life.”

She blinked at him and said, “Oh. And your family? Where do they come from?”

A knot of tension was beginning to form in his gut but he tried his best to ignore it. “My dad grew up here, too, and my mom’s from Puerto Rico. She moved to Texas for high school when she was a teenager and she’s lived here ever since.”

“It’s so nice she had the opportunity to come to the U. S. and get a good education,” Tammy commented and the knot in Victor’s stomach grew that much weightier at the implication that Puerto Rico wasn’t part of the U. S. and that a quality education wouldn’t have been possible there. Before he could figure out a reasonably polite way to correct her, Tammy asked, “Does she speak English?”

“Yeah, of course,” Victor said, struggling to keep his voice even. “Like I said, she’s been living here since she was a teenager.”

“Well, you know not everyone makes an effort to learn the language once they get here.”

Victor stared at her, unable to think of any response to that that didn’t end in him losing his temper.

“His mother, Isabel, is becoming a good friend of mine, actually,” Amelia said pointedly, looking irritated herself as she attempted to move the conversation away from Tammy’s ignorant remarks. “We’ve been meeting up for coffee almost every week this past month.”

“It’s great that your families are so friendly. I know it must be hard for some people in your situation,” Tammy said, gesturing with her fork at Victor and Benji.

Benji narrowed his eyes. “What situation?”

“Oh, I just mean that where I’m from in Kentucky people are a little more traditional, you know? Most families wouldn’t be too happy about this sort of arrangement. I thought people in Texas might feel similarly.”

“It’s not an ‘arrangement’, it’s a relationship. Victor’s my boyfriend.”

“She didn’t mean anything by that, Benji. Relax,” Isaac cut in, shooting Benji an annoyed look. “You don’t need to take offense at every little thing.”

“What, you mean like the weird questions about Victor’s family? Or the way that she’s obviously super uncomfortable around us?” Benji shot back. Tammy’s eyes went wide in response to being called out, as though she couldn’t believe that she’d done anything wrong.

“Benji, please. Let’s just try and have a nice dinner. You put a lot of work into this, we don’t need to spoil that by getting into petty arguments at the table,” Mike reprimanded.

“I really didn’t mean to offend anyone. This is why my mama is always yelling at me to keep my big mouth closed, sometimes it just runs away from me,” Tammy said, letting out a forced laugh. She leaned over the table toward Victor, placing her hand near his but not quite touching him. “I’m really sorry, Victor, I was only curious. I hope my questions didn’t bother you. I actually find that culture so beautiful – the music, and the food – oh my god, I can eat my own weight in enchiladas – and my girlfriends and I even took some Tango classes last year, it was so much fun. I bet you’re a great dancer, aren’t you?”

Victor had to take a deep breath to stay calm and say evenly, “Not really. Not as good as Benji, anyway.”

He wasn’t even going to bother mentioning the fact that enchiladas were a Mexican dish or that Tango came from Argentina. It didn’t seem worth the effort and he was more than ready for a change of topic.

“So, who’s ready for dessert?” Victor asked with an awkward smile, making eye contact with Benji and hoping that the unspoken message he was sending would be received. Fortunately, Benji picked up on his silent distress signal and got up from his seat.

“Can you guys help me clear some of this stuff away while I get it ready?” Benji asked Isaac and Victor. They began carrying the dishes and left over food into the kitchen while Benji decorated the top of the cake with candles. When it was ready they all sang the “Happy Birthday” song and Amelia leaned over to give Benji a kiss on the cheek before she blew out the flames.

“Where are my hundreds and thousands?” Amelia jokingly complained as she surveyed the slice of cake Benji placed in front of her.

“The what?” Tammy asked, as Isaac rolled his eyes and said, “She means sprinkles. You’re turning forty-eight, Mum, not six.”

“All the more reason why I need something bright and cheerful in my life.”

Benji took a bite and winced. “Sorry. It turned out really dry, didn’t it? I can grab you some more strawberry jam or icing if you want.”

“It’s perfect, Benji, thank you so much for doing all of this.” She gave him a little hug, and then got up to hug Victor as well. “Thank you _both_.”

Tammy took a small bite of cake and said, “I can’t believe you two managed to do all of this by yourselves. The men in my family wouldn’t be able to fry an egg even if their lives depended on it.”

“That’s pretty pathetic,” Benji muttered, looking like he was reaching his limit of how much of Tammy’s commentary he could take. Victor knew the feeling.

Tammy didn’t seem to hear him, though, as she continued with, “There was one time we had to call the fire marshal out to the house just because my brother Greg tried to make a grilled cheese.”

Isaac laughed. “I was about ready to call 911 when I walked in here this afternoon. You guys should’ve seen it, there was blood and all kinds of stuff everywhere. Honestly, I’m impressed this dinner turned out as good as it did, I was worried for a while there that it was gonna end in a trip to the ER.”

Victor darted his gaze over to Benji in concern. He was staring down at his plate, his jaw clenched, and the look on his face made Victor’s heart ache for him. Isaac noticed Benji’s reaction as well, and he hurried to try and back track.

“Hey, don’t be so sensitive. I just said it turned out really well, okay? You guys did a great job.”

“Whatever,” Benji muttered, staring away from Isaac.

“I mean it, the food was great-”

“No, it wasn’t, Isaac!” Benji finally snapped. “I know I screwed it all up, like usual. You guys can stop pretending it was so wonderful.”

“Benji-” Amelia said in concern, but Isaac interrupted.

“Why do you always have to do this? It’s like every little thing I say, everything _Tammy_ says, pisses you off. You’ve been bitchy since the minute I walked in the door. If you have a problem with me, just say so, because this passive aggressive shit is getting really old.”

“That’s enough,” Mike warned. “This isn’t the time.”

Benji’s frustration with Isaac had clearly reached its breaking point though, because he ignored his father and continued to glare in Isaac’s direction. “My problem is _you_ , and the fact that you’re obviously completely embarrassed by me!”

Isaac stared at him in shock. “What? Where the hell is that coming from?”

“Could we please not do this today?” Amelia said, looking back and forth between them. “This is the first time Isaac’s been home since November, it would be nice if we could just enjoy the time together and not spend all of it arguing. _Please_.”

“Fine. I’m sorry for fighting,” Benji bit out, and then he abruptly pushed his chair back and left the room. Victor watched him storm off down the hallway in shock, unsure of whether or not he should try to follow him. He’d hardly ever seen Benji get this upset before and he didn’t know if Benji would want his company at the moment. Before he came to a decision, however, Isaac stood up and stalked off toward Benji’s room, and a moment later they could hear the door open and close followed by the sound of muffled voices.

Mike drew in a sharp breath and began to rise as well, until Amelia put a hand on his arm. The look on her face was resigned.

“Just let them work it out on their own. I think this has probably been coming for awhile now.” She turned to Tammy and said, “Why don’t we go have a cup of tea in the garden? The weather’s so nice today it’d be a shame to waste it.”

“I’ll bring it out to you,” Mike said as Amelia and Tammy headed outside. He started working on the tea, so Victor cleared the table and then began washing the dishes. From the hallway he could hear Benji and Isaac’s voices getting steadily louder, although he still couldn’t make out what they were saying. Whatever it was, it didn’t sound like things were going very well so far.

“You’re a real hard worker, aren’t you, Victor?” Mike said, returning to the kitchen after delivering the tea. He grabbed a towel and began drying the clean stuff. “You see what needs to be done and you do it. I bet your parents must be proud of you.”

Victor laughed a little awkwardly. “Oh no, I’m just used to having a lot of chores, that’s all. Sometimes I think my parents had us just for the free labor, you know?”

Mike grinned. “It is one of the perks of having kids. I haven’t met your father yet, but your mom is certainly proud of you. And despite the way they’ve been acting tonight, I’m very proud of my sons, too. _Both_ of them. I’ve been trying to tell Benji that, but I don’t think he hears me.”

The shouting in Benji’s room was getting louder and louder, making a spike of anxiety shoot through Victor. “Are they going to be okay?”

“They’ve always been like this. I was so close with my brothers growing up, and I hoped Isaac and Benji would be, too, but ever since they were little boys they’ve been at odds. They just don’t seem to understand each other, and they never really have. I think underneath it all they’re very similar, but they see the world and react to it in completely different ways.”

Victor really wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but before he could there was the sound of a door slamming open and then Isaac came marching down the hall and disappeared into the living room. Mike sighed wearily.

“Thanks for the help cleaning up,” he said. “Please make yourself at home. I’m just going to go have a word with him.”

Victor wasn’t sure which son Mike was referring to until he headed for the living room, and then Victor decided that maybe it was time to try and check on Benji. The door was still open when he got to Benji’s room, but there was no sign of him at first until Victor picked up on the sound of him breathing roughly from the opposite side of the bed.

Benji was sitting on the floor, leaning back against his mattress, with his eyes pinched shut and his arms around his knees. He wasn’t crying, but his shoulders were shaking with each breath, and he didn’t acknowledge Victor at first when he carefully sat down beside him.

“Hey,” Victor said softly.

“I need you to do something for me,” Benji told him without opening his eyes. “Out in the hallway there’s a linen closet. On the top shelf, in the back, there’s an empty tissue box that has a bottle in it. Take it and hide it somewhere else, or throw it away or whatever. It’s my dad’s and I can’t know where it is tonight.”

“Okay.”

Victor did what Benji had asked, removing what turned out to be a bottle of whiskey and hiding it in the master bedroom. He felt weird about going in there, but it also seemed like the best place to put it so Benji wouldn’t feel tempted to seek it out later.

“It’s gone,” Victor told him as he settled back down on the floor with his side pressed close against Benji’s.

“Thank you. I never touched any of it, I swear. I only found it back there, like, a week ago.”

Victor wrapped his arm around Benji and drew him in a little closer. “I believe you.”

Leaning his head against Victor’s shoulder, Benji just sat there quietly for awhile as he slowly began to calm down. Victor rubbed small, soothing circles over Benji’s upper arm and waited for him to speak.

Eventually Benji said, in a low, flat voice, “I asked him. About what happened at Thanksgiving – why Tammy didn’t know anything about me even though he’d obviously told her stuff about everyone else in the family. And he just said it “slipped his mind,” like he’d somehow completely forgotten he even had a brother. I mean, she knew the month of our grandparents’ wedding anniversary, for god’s sake, but not that I’m gay? I tried to call bullshit on that but he just demanded to know what my problem with Tammy is. So I asked him how he could be with someone that’s clearly homophobic and racist, and then he started defending her like he hadn’t even been in the room earlier when she’d said all that blatantly stupid stuff about your family. He kept making excuses, like ‘she grew up in a conservative area’, and ‘her dad’s the Republican attorney general for Kentucky’, and all this other crap that’s apparently supposed to make it okay for her to be so ignorant. But as annoying as Tammy is, it’s not really about her. It’s about the way she’s been changing him. Ever since he started dating her he’s become a different person. His opinions are getting more conservative, he’s apparently started going to church with her, and even the way he’s dressing now has changed. I mean, god, the two of them look like they’re headed over to _Fox and Friends_ after dinner. I don’t even know who he is anymore. It’s not like we were ever all that close, but at least he was never ashamed of me before.”

There were tears in Benji’s eyes now, and Victor hated the sight of them, hated that there was something hurting him that Victor couldn’t fix. He wished there was something he could say, some solution to the problem, but if there was, he couldn’t see it. All he could do was listen and hold Benji and hope that it would be enough to lessen his pain.

“The last time they were here I came so close to messing up,” Benji admitted, his face clouding over with guilt. “My dad thinks he’s good at hiding his booze, but the truth is he’s really not, and I can’t even call him out on it because if I do it’ll sound like I’ve been going looking for it, which will just make things weird between us again. I knew where he was hiding his stuff last time, too, and honestly if I hadn’t spent that night talking to you I probably _would’ve_ fucked up. I’m sorry, I know you think I’m better than that but I’m not. There are some days like this where I’m just barely holding it together and I hate it because it means that he’s right – _Isaac’s right to be embarrassed by me_ -”

“Benji, stop,” Victor interrupted. Benji was glaring down at the floor in front of him, his eyes bright and wet and so full of self-loathing that it made Victor feel desperate to end this downward spiral before it dragged Benji any lower than it already had. “Back in November you could have chosen to drink but you didn’t. You asked me for help instead, and if Dani hadn’t been working that night you would’ve gone to her. Either way, you _didn’t_ drink. And just now you told me to hide that bottle of whiskey so you wouldn’t end up looking for it later. You’re not weak just because you need help sometimes.”

Benji shook his head. “It’s not just sometimes, it’s all the time. I think about it _all the time_ , Victor, and I fucking hate it. Everyday the temptation to start drinking again is there. I want to be the guy that you think I am, the one that’s confident and has all his shit together and is always proud of who he is, but a lot of the time I’m not that person. I’m an addict, and I always will be, and I’m so scared that one of these days you’re going to be embarrassed by me, too, just like Isaac, and Tammy, and my dad, and Derek…”

“Look at me.”

Victor waited, but Benji kept his furious gaze locked on the floor, and every part of Victor was aching with a sympathetic pain, with a need to somehow prove to Benji how incredibly wrong he was.

“Benji, _p_ _lease_ , look at me,” Victor pleaded, gentle but urgent, and finally Benji’s gaze lifted to meet his. “I love you. I love you just as much right now as I did yesterday; probably even more than yesterday, actually, despite the fact that today has been a total disaster, because it seems like I can’t help falling in love with you a little bit more every single day. The fact that you’re not perfect isn’t exactly news to me. I know that you’re an addict, and that you’re grumpy in the mornings and you hate to share your coffee, and I know you secretly judge people based on their taste in music-” Benji huffed out a tiny, broken-sounding laugh at that, “-and that you feel like you’re not good enough sometimes. But I also know that you’re funny and patient and kind, and one of the best people I’ve ever met. I could never feel ashamed of you.”

There was still a shadow of doubt lingering in Benji’s eyes when he said, quiet as a confessional, “Ever since my accident everyone seems to just be waiting for me to screw up again. Getting drunk at Mia’s party last fall only made that worse. My parents are always nagging me to go to every single meeting, sometimes three or four times a week, whether I feel like I need to or not, and Isaac won’t even openly acknowledge any of it but it’s obvious he thinks I’m going to fall off the wagon any day now. Even Dani, who has been really supportive, worries all the time that I’ll slip up, because she’s an addict, too, and she knows how hard it is. You’re the only one that expects the best of me, and I love that about you, but there are also times when it feels like there’s so much pressure to be as good as you think I am. What if someday I make the wrong choice and I mess up again? As much as I want to, I can’t promise you that it’ll never happen.”

“I don’t want you to promise me that, Benji. I mean, I can’t exactly swear to you that I’ll never lose my temper again, or do something crazy and impulsive, or run away from something that scares me. You’re not the only one who makes mistakes. But seeing how hard you try all the time to be a good person makes me want to try to be better, too. You just have to let go of this need to be perfect. All day today you were killing yourself trying to get everything exactly right to impress your family when they already love you so much. I know things are really screwed up with you and Isaac, and I hate that, but it sounds like he’s the one to blame for that, not you. Your parents – both of them – are really proud of you. I’m proud of you, too. You’re already perfect to me, exactly the way you are right now.”

“This is really what you’re into?” Benji said, with a watery laugh, wiping at his red eyes and runny nose. His hair was a little messy again now, and his pants wrinkled from siting on the floor, and there were tear tracks shining on his cheeks. He still looked like everything Victor had ever wanted. “You could probably do better.”

“No, I really couldn’t.”

Victor pressed a hand against the side of his face, cradling the curve of Benji’s jaw within his palm, and leaned over to kiss him. The brush of their lips was light, tasting a little of salt but mostly of Benji, the soft, sweet warmth of his mouth and the familiar, heady smell of him as good as it always was, as good as the first kiss, enough to leave Victor breathless and thinking, _this one, this person, just Benji, Benji, Benji, today and tomorrow and maybe every single day after that._

It was dark outside by the time Victor and Benji allowed Amelia to drag them out to the garden with her, Benji a little quiet still but much calmer than he had been all day. In the center of the patio a ring of chairs encircled a metal fire pit, which was burning brightly and imbuing everything around it with a soft orange glow. Everyone else was already gathered there, so Victor and Benji took the two remaining seats in between Amelia and Isaac. The evening was a warm one, the temperatures already rising rapidly now that spring had arrived, but there was just enough of a cool breeze in the air to make sitting next to the fire pleasant.

“I know we had cake earlier, but it’s my birthday so I’ll have as many sweets as I like,” Amelia said as she handed them a couple of barbecue skewers and a bag of marshmallows.

“Are we doing s’mores?” Benji asked.

“There aren’t any graham crackers, but there’s chocolate and we can make do with some of Mum’s biscuits,” Isaac answered, passing Benji a package of the cookies Amelia liked as solemnly as though it was a peace offering, which Victor guessed it basically was.

Benji accepted it with a quiet, “Thanks,” and began to slowly turn his marshmallow over the hot embers. Isaac thrust his own straight into the center of the fire, where it immediately burst into flames, and then he yanked it back again and calmly blew it out. Benji shook his head. “I can’t believe you still do it that way. It’s a piece of charcoal now, how can you possibly like that?”

“You just carefully slide off the skin and eat the gooey insides,” Isaac said, demonstrating the procedure. He flicked the blackened husk into the fire. “There’s no need to slow roast it for four hours like a freaking Christmas turkey.”

Benji continued to methodically turn his own at a steady pace. “Maybe I don’t mind taking it slow.”

Benji’s mother was sitting less than a foot away from Victor so he absolutely did not allow himself to think about anything else that Benji didn’t mind taking slow. It was a good thing it was so dark outside.

As Isaac repeated his technique a second time, Benji said pointedly, “I’m not here to eat half the bag in less than three minutes.”

“Dude, I was ten years old when that happened, you need to let it go.”

Tammy giggled. “What an animal.”

Isaac opened an additional package of cookies for his well-roasted marshmallow, causing Amelia to squint over at it and exclaim, “Are those my Jammie Dodgers? You _are_ an animal, give those here.”

Benji wrinkled his nose. “You’re seriously making a s’more out of a Jammie Dodger? What’s wrong with you?”

“A Jammie what now?” Victor asked in confusion.

“Hey, don’t knock it till you try it,” Isaac said, taking apart what seemed to be a jam filled cookie and sandwiching the marshmallow plus a chunk of chocolate between the two halves. Everyone watched in horrified disgust as he bit into it. “Actually, it’s not that bad.”

“You’re a sick man,” Benji said despairingly.

It was hard to believe that less than an hour ago Benji and Isaac had been shouting at each other, but underlying their banter was a tension that Victor could sense mainly because of how well he knew Benji. Despite his best efforts to make nice with his brother now for Amelia’s sake, Benji still couldn’t quite look Isaac in the eye when he spoke to him. The peace between the two of them felt as brittle as thin ice, ready to shatter at the first wrong step.

“So what are your plans for the rest of spring break?” Mike asked Isaac and Tammy.

“Well, after we leave here on Tuesday we’re going to spend a few days in Louisville with my family, then a weekend in Nashville before we head back to Atlanta,” Tammy explained. She turned to Benji and Victor. “What about y’all? When does your break start?”

“In a couple of weeks from now,” Victor answered. “Me and Benji are going down to the Hill Country with some of our friends.”

“All on your own?” Tammy asked in surprise.

Benji told her, “Our friend’s uncle and his family will be there, too.”

Tammy shook her head. “No way my parents would have allowed anything like that, but they’re the strict, old-fashioned type. Y’all sure are a modern family, aren’t you? Just like that TV show.”

Like a lot of the things Tammy had said that day, it was hard to tell if it was meant to to be a compliment or an insult. Victor personally doubted that ‘modern families’ were something she approved of.

“Well, it’s not exactly as thrilling as a fishing trip with your old man, but the Hill Country should be fun,” Mike said, diplomatically overlooking Tammy’s comment. He gave Benji a smile. “And we can do that another time, anyway. Those fish aren’t going anywhere. Are you interested, Victor?”

“Uh, I’ve actually never done it before.”

“You should come with us then. Maybe we could go on a camping trip this summer, all six of us.”

The ease with which Benji’s parents had accepted Victor and continued to welcome him left a warmth in Victor’s chest that wasn’t just the result of sitting next to the fire. He nodded and said, “Yeah, that’d be really cool.”

“Just to clarify, by ‘camping’, are we talking about tents and sleeping bags on the cold, hard ground, or a fully furnished rustic-chic Airbnb in the countryside?” Tammy asked.

Amelia leaned over Mike to pat her arm. “We’re tent people, I’m afraid.”

Tammy’s smile froze on her face. “Oh. Well. Won’t that be… an interesting experience.”

“We’ll work something out,” Mike said, with a meaningful look at his sons. “How we do something doesn’t really matter as much as finding a way to do it together. Even if that means compromising a little in order to find some common ground.”

Where was the common ground for two people whose lives were taking them in completely different directions the way Benji and Isaac’s were? Victor thought he might understand now what Mike had meant when he’d said earlier that the two of them were very similar despite seeing the world so differently. He barely knew Isaac, but he recognized in him the same drive to meet the expectations of those he respected that he saw in Benji, the same loyalty to someone he loved, the same depth of his convictions.

Benji wasn’t the only one with family that he couldn’t see eye to eye with. Victor was still struggling to navigate the new waters he and his father found themselves in since he’d come out, and there were days when it felt like maybe they’d never be able to truly understand each other. And besides Armando there was still Victor’s extended family, his _abuelos_ and _tios_ and _primos_ , most of whom he hadn’t seen in months because of his work trip to Texarkana and his parents’ separation. He’d had so many other things to worry about that he hadn’t thought much about them, but he would have to tell them eventually and despite how much more sure of himself he felt nowadays he was still terrified of having to face all of them.

How did you learn to live with these people that you loved while knowing that their worldview was the antithesis of your own? Did you spend the rest of your lives tip-toeing around certain topics until your entire relationship felt like a minefield, the way it seemed like a thoughtless comment between Benji and Isaac could so easily set off a new explosion? Did you take the scraps of acceptance you were given and tell yourself to be grateful for them, like Victor had been doing these past two months with his own father?

He wanted to believe that the common ground was a place of mutual understanding and respect for each others’ differences, but what if it was a no man’s land instead? A place where you moved neither forward nor backward in order to maintain the fragile status quo. A place where hurt was still imminent, an ever-present risk that never stopped hanging heavy as a raised fist over your head.

But as Victor got lost in his thoughts everyone else was laughing at a story Isaac was telling about a camping trip. He was teasing Benji in a good-natured, affectionate way that had Benji’s eyes lighting up and the tension slowly disappearing from his body, and no one seemed to mind when Benji relaxed enough to reach out and slip his hand into Victor’s. Isaac and Benji laughed at something Mike said, and their voices sounded exactly the same just then, like they were meant to fit together like that.

As hard as it was to see the way out from where he was standing now, Victor had to hold onto the hope that the no man’s land wasn’t the end of the journey. Maybe love and compassion would somehow be enough to lead them through it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Total sidebar: the material of Victor's shirt is a cotton sateen, in case anyone else out there is a fabric nerd like I am and actually cares about that lol.
> 
> Edit: I've been informed by multiple sources including my own wife (who's British) that my perception of Yorkshire puddings as being bread-like is completely incorrect. So what the heck are they? Some say pancakes, my wife claims they're dumplings... We may never know.
> 
> Apparently my concept of a British roast dinner is also deeply flawed, because my wife and I have been doing them in a hybrid British-American way that I didn't realize was in fact hybrid. So to clarify: the mashed potatoes are more American, most Brits would expect roasted potatoes with a roast dinner, and brussels sprouts are generally only eaten at Christmas and I guess it's just my mother in law who likes to eat them year round. Anyway, I'm not going to edit anything because the Campbells are also a transatlantic family so you'll have to just forgive the American influences that snuck in there lol

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments/feedback are very much appreciated!


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